Love is the whole history of a woman’s life, it is but an episode in a man’s.
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.
I do not want an echo of myself from my children. I do not want to hear from them merely the reverberation of my own voice.
Anyone who can see as far as tomorrow in politics arouses the wrath of people who can see no farther than today.
The more we know the better we forgive. Whoever feels deeply, feels for all who live.
The thing that must be preserved in all situations whatever is the reputation of one’s character.
No nation has the right to bring about a revolution, even though such a change may be most urgently needed, if the price is the blood of one single innocent individual...
Happiness is a wondrous commodity: the more you give, the more you have.
Love is above the laws, above the opinion of men; it is the truth, the flame, the pure element, the primary idea of the moral world.
And all the bustle of departure – sometimes sad, sometimes intoxicating – just as fear or hope may be inspired by the new chances of coming destiny.
Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?
Be happy, but be happy through piety.
Superstition is related to this life, religion to the next; superstition is allied to fatality, religion to virtue; it is by the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious; it is, on the contrary, by the sacrifice of these desires that we become religious.
Truth and, by consequence, liberty, will always be the chief power of honest men.
The evil arising from mental improvement can be corrected only by a still further progress in that very improvement. Either morality is a fable, or the more enlightened we are, the more attached to it we become.
If we would succeed in works of the imagination, we must offer a mild morality in the midst of rigid manners; but where the manners are corrupt, we must consistently hold up to view an austere morality.
Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, deprives attention of its power, thought of its originality, and sentiment of its depth.
When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule, everything is undone except money and power.
You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite.
When men do wrong, it is out of hardness; when women do wrong, it is out of weakness.