It is often our best friends who throw us down.

You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.

...mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain.

Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.

Puns are the droppings of soaring wits.

Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought.