Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful.
Labor is life; thought is light.
Because one doesn’t like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God.
Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.
If the infinite had no me, then me would be its limit. It would not be the infinite, therefore it would not be.
In love, such a word, whispered, is a mysterious kiss of the soul to the soul.
I write with one hand, but I fight with both.
God has bestowed two gifts on man: hope and ignorance. Ignorance is the better of the two.
The most excellent symbol of the people is the paving stone. One walks on it until it falls on one’s head.
Let us say it now: to be blind and to be loved, is indeed, upon this earth where nothing is complete, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness.
They say love is blindness of heart; I say not to love is blindness.
Religion, Society, and Nature – these are the three struggles of man.
Man does not understand nor accept immortality except on condition of self-remembrance.
Inanimate objects sometimes appear endowed with a strange power of sight. A statue notices, a tower watches, the face of an edifice contemplates.
In saying no to progress, it is not the future which they condemn, but themselves. They give themselves a melancholy disease; they inoculate themselves with the past. There is but one way of refusing tomorrow, that is to die.
Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.
We should judge a man much more surely from what he dreams than from what he thinks.
My greatness does not extend to this shelf.
There is a way of meeting error while on the road of truth.
To pay compliments to the one we love is the first method of caressing, a demi-audacity venturing. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.