It is difficult to grow old gracefully.
Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.
The memories which come to us through music are not accompanied by any regrets; for a moment music gives us back the pleasures it retraces, and we feel them again rather than recollect them.
The education of life perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous.
The mind’s pleasures are made to calm the tempests of the heart.
Between God and love, I recognize no mediator but my conscience...
How much past there is in a life, however brief it be.
I am glad that I am not a man, for then I should have to marry a woman.
Why shouldn’t man be as angry about not having always been alive as about having to stop being alive?
Life resembles Gobelin tapestry; you do not see the canvass on the right side; but when you turn it, the threads are visible.
The most beautiful landscapes in the world, if they evoke no memory, if they bear no trace of a remarkable event, are uninteresting compared to historic landscapes.
Venice astonishes more than it pleases at first sight...
If one hour’s work is enough to govern France, four minutes is all that is needed for Italy. There is no nation more easily frightened; even its poetic imagination predisposes it to fear, and they look upon power as on an image that fills them with terror.
Self-love, so sensitive in its own cause, has rarely any sympathy to spare for others.
The study of history, it seems to me, leads to the conviction that all important events tend toward the same end – the civilization of mankind.
Unhappy love freezes all our affections: our own souls grow inexplicable to us. More than we gained while we were happy we lose by the reverse.
Happy the land where the writers are sad, the merchants satisfied, the rich melancholic, and the populace content.
Prayer is the life of the soul.
Have you not observed that faith is generally strongest in those whose character may be called the weakest?
Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.