The aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry.

The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them.

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.

We are reassured almost as foolishly as we are alarmed; human nature is so constituted.

Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.

Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil!

Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment.