Smallness in a great man seems smaller by its disproportion with all the rest.

In saying no to progress, it is not the future which they condemn, but themselves. They give themselves a melancholy disease; they inoculate themselves with the past. There is but one way of refusing tomorrow, that is to die.

Children at once accept joy and happiness with quick familiarity, being themselves naturally all happiness and joy.

It is the peculiarity of grief to bring out the childish side of man.

O darkness, the sky is a gloomy precinct Whose door you close, and whose key the soul owns; And night divides itself in half, being diabolical and holy, Between Ilis, the black angel, and Christ, the starry Human Being.

Nature, like a kind and smiling mother, lends herself to our dreams and cherishes our fancies.

I think I missed my calling. I should have been an interior decorator.