Nothing is so stifling as symmetry. Symmetry is boredom, the quintessence of mourning. Despair yawns. There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering - a hell of boredom.

The tomb is not a blind alley: it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight. It opens on the dawn.

Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river.

It is the end. But of what? The end of France? No. The end of kings? Yes.

There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.

Loving is almost a substitute for thinking. Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things. How shall we ask passion to be logical?

Sire, you are looking at a plain man, and I am looking at a great man. Each of us may benefit.