Inspiration and genius -one and the same.

My tastes are aristocratic, my actions democratic.

The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation's effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius.

Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.

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.

Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.