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.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.

No doubt it was necessary to civilize man in relation to man. That work is already advanced and is making progress every day. But man must be civilized also in relation to nature.

The memory of an absent person shines in the deepest recesses of the heart, shining the more brightly the more wholly its object has vanished: a light on the horizon of the despairing, darkened spirit; a star gleaming in our inward night.

There is no rapture in the love which is prompted by esteem; such affection is lasting, not passionate.

Ma vie est une énigme dont ton nom est le mot. (My life is an enigma, of which your name is the word.)