These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic calligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply.

There must be people who pray even for those who never pray.

Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children.

Dying is nothing. What's terrible is not to live.

The hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of arts.

I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary.

How frightened hypocrisy hastens to defend itself.