Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.
Inspiration and genius -one and the same.
The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them.
Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.
For there are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life.
Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.
Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance.
Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.
Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.
Pain is as diverse as man. One suffers as one can.
How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.
Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.
I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself.
Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.
People weighed down with troubles do not look back; they know only too well that misfortune stalks them.
The first symptom of true love in a man is timidity, in a young woman, boldness. This is surprising, and yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each other and assuming each the other’s qualities.
Wherever the Turkish hoof trods, no grass grows.
One of the magnanimities of woman is to yield.
The soul has greater need of the ideal than of the real.
Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface.