What is not in nature can never be true.

It has taken seas of blood to drown the idol of despotism, but the English do not think they bought their laws too dearly.

You must have the devil in you to succeed in the arts.

It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.

You see, Mademoiselle, I have experience, I know the world. To pass the time, why don't you ask every passenger to tell you his life's story? And if there is a single one among them who has never cursed his life, who has not often told himself that he was the unhappiest of men, then you may throw me overboard, headfirst!

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.