Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.

I am the best-natured creature in the world, and yet I have already killed three, and of these three two were priests.

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?

Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It’s the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared.

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.

How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite.

Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls.