You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do no bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.

The mother...swinging the children by pulling on a length of string, while at the same time she kept and eye on them with that protective watchfulness, half animal, half angelic, which is the quality of motherhood.

The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.

Who then understands the reciprocal flux and reflux of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abysses of being, and the avalanches of creation?

The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.

Heaven, on occasion, half opens its arms to us; and that is the great moment.

Genius: the superhuman in man.