The world is the work of a single thought, expressed in a thousand different ways.
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.
Love is the symbol of eternity.
Kindness and generosity ... form the true morality of human actions.
Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time.
Enthusiasm gives life to what is invisible; and interest to what has no immediate action on our comfort in this world.
There are women vain of advantages not connected with their persons, such as birth, rank, and fortune; it is difficult to feel less the dignity of the sex. The origin of all women may be called celestial, for their power is the offspring of the gifts of Nature; by yielding to pride and ambition they soon destroy the magic of their charms.
The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.
Nothing recalls the past like music.
The mind's pleasures are made to calm the tempests of the heart.
Truth and, by consequence, liberty, will always be the chief power of honest men.
Whatever is natural admits of variety.
Life often seems like a long shipwreck of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love. - The shores of existence are strewn with them.
When men do wrong, it is out of hardness; when women do wrong, it is out of weakness.
Men have made of fortune an all-powerful goddess, in order that she may be made responsible for all their blunder's.
nothing is so horrifying as the possibility of existing simply because we do not know how to die.
Every time a new nation, America or Russia for instance, advances toward civilization, the human race perfects itself; every time an inferior class emerges from enslavement and degradation, the human race again perfects itself.
Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.
Intellect does not attain its full force unless it attacks power.
Madame de Stael thought it was pride in mankind to endeavour to penetrate the secret of the universe; and speaking of the higher metaphysics she said: "I prefer the Lord's Prayer to it all."
O Earth! All bathed with blood and tears, yet never, Hast thou ceased putting forth thy fruit and flowers.
Purity of mind and conduct is the first glory of a woman.
Divine Wisdom, intending to detain us some time on earth, has done well to cover with a veil the prospect of the life to come; for if our sight could clearly distinguish the opposite bank, who would remain on this tempestuous coast of time?
Speech happens to not be his language.
Beauty is one in the universe, and, whatever form it assumes, it always arouses a religious feeling in the hearts of mankind.
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.
Only the refined and delicate pleasures that spring from research and education can build up barriers between different ranks.
Happiness is a wondrous commodity: the more you give, the more you have.
Nature, who permits no two leaves to be exactly alike, has given a still greater diversity to human minds. Imitation, then, is a double murder; for it deprives both copy and original of their primitive existence.
Love is admiring with the heart. And admiring is loving with the mind.
Goethe has made a remark upon the perfectability of the human mind, which is full of sagacity: It is always advancing, but in a spiral line.
The more I see of man, the more I like dogs.
Liberty is the only idea which circulates with the human blood, in all ages, in all countries, and in all literature - liberty that is, and what cannot be separated from liberty, a love of country.
Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.
Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.
Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.
When we destroy an old prejudice, we have need of a new virtue.
The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.
The language of religion can alone suit every situation and every mode of feeling.
One must, so long as there is any life left, back up the character of one's life.
It is not enough to forgive; one must forget.
Life, for me, is living among my friends.
One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering.
[On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.
The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.
Good taste cannot supply the place of genius in literature, for the best proof of taste, when there is no genius, would be, not to write at all.
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.
That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.
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.
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.
Genius inspires this thirst for fame: there is no blessing undesired by those to whom Heaven gave the means of winning it.
Mystery such as is given of God is beyond the power of human penetration, yet not in opposition to it.
Love is the whole history of a woman's life, it is but an episode in a man's.
Anyone who can see as far as tomorrow in politics arouses the wrath of people who can see no farther than today.
We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love
It is difficult to grow old gracefully.
The mind may be exhausted, but the language of the heart is inexhaustible.
How true it is that, sooner or later, the' most rebellious must bow beneath the yoke of misfortune!
One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.
Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.
Love which is only an episode in the life of men, is the entire history of the life of women.
New doctrines ever displease the old. They like to fancy that the world has been losing wisdom, instead of gaining it, since they were young.
Providence protects us in all the details of our lot.
The people are as severe toward the clergy as toward women; they want to see absolute devotion to duty from both.
It seems to me that life's circumstances, being ephemeral, teach us less about durable truths than the fictions based on those truths; and that the best lessons of delicacy and self-respect are to be found in novels where the feelings are so naturally portrayed that you fancy you are witnessing real life as you read.
To pray together, in whatever tongue or ritual, is the most tender brotherhood of hope and sympathy that man can contract in this life.
When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule, everything is undone except money and power.
Taste is to literature what bon ton is in society.
Between God and love, I recognize no mediator but my conscience.
We understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love.
Exile: A tomb in which you can get mail.
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.
The only equitable manner in my opinion, of judging the character of a man is to examine if there are personal calculations in his conduct; if there are not, we may blame his manner of judging, but we are not the less bound to esteem him.
a perfect piece of architecture kindles that aimless reverie, which bears the soul we know not whither.
Prayer is the life of the soul.
Happy the land where the writers are sad, the merchants satisfied, the rich melancholic, and the populace content.
Be happy, but be happy through piety.
Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened.
[Ridicule] laughs at all those who see the earnestness of life and who still believe in true feelings and in serious thought ... It soils the hope of youth. Only shameless vice is above its reach.
How much past there is in a life, however brief it be.
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.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Men do not change; they unmask themselves.
The more we know the better we forgive. Whoever feels deeply, feels for all who live.
In women's destiny everything goes downhill except for thought, whose immortal nature it is to keep constantly rising.
Never, never have I been loved as I love others!
Who understands much, forgives much.
Morality must guide calculation, and calculation must guide politics.
Tombs decked by the arts can scarcely represent death as a formidable enemy; we do not, indeed, like the ancients, carve sports and dances in the sarcophagus, but thought is diverted from the bier by works that tell of immortality, even from the altar of death.
Life teaches much, but to all thinking persons it brings ever closer the will of God - not because their faculties decline, but on the contrary, because they increase.
Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness.
The success of any man with any woman is apt to displease even his best friends.
[On Napoleon:] One has the impression of an imperious wind blowing about one's ears when one is near that man.
In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable.
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.
I am glad that I am not a man, for then I should have to marry a woman.
[The Germans] so easily confuse obstinacy with energy, and rudeness with firmness.
Who understands much forgives much. To understand everything makes us very forgiving.
Of all human sentiments, enthusiasm creates the most happiness; it is the only sentiment in fact which gives real happiness, the only sentiment which can help us to bear our human destiny in any situation in which we may find ourselves.
Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.
To be totally understanding makes one very indulgent.
Enthusiasm signifies 'God in us.'
intellect is a sin that must be atoned for by leading exactly the life of those who have none.
When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.
the last steps of life are ever slow and difficult.
When women oppose themselves to the projects and ambition of men, they excite their lively resentment; if in their youth they meddle with political intrigues, their modesty must suffer.
Have you not observed that faith is generally strongest in those whose character may be called the weakest?
The entire social order ... is arrayed against a woman who wants to rise to a man's reputation.
I never was able to believe in the existence of next year except as in a metaphysical notion.
Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, deprives attention of its power, thought of its originality, and sentiment of its depth.
[To Bonaparte, when asked why she meddled in politics:] Sire, when women have their heads cut off, it is but just they should know the reason.
When at eve, at the bounding of the landscape, the heavens appear to recline so slowly on the earth, imagination pictures beyond the horizon an asylum of hope, - a native land of love; and nature seems silently to repeat that man is immortal.
Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.
The greatest happiness is to transform one's feelings into action.
What matters in a character is not whether one holds this or that opinion: what matters is how proudly one upholds it.
A voyage without companionship, that is to say without conversation, is one of the saddest pleasures of life.
We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.
Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?
Love, supreme power of the heart, mysterious enthusiasm that encloses in itself all poetry, all heroism, all religion!
[On Russia:] In every way, there is something gigantic about this people: ordinary dimensions have no applications whatever to it. I do not mean by this that true greatness and stability are never met with; but their boldness, their imaginativeness knows no bounds. With them everything is colossal rather than well-proportioned, audacious rather than well-considered, and if they do not attain their goals, it is because they exceed them.
The life of famous men was more glorious in antiquity; the life of obscure men is happier with the moderns.
Whatever efforts one may make, one must revert to the realization that religion is the real basis of morality; religion is the real and perceptible purpose within us, which alone, can turn aside our attention from things. ... The science of morality can no more teach human beings to be honest, in all the magnificence of this word, than geometry can teach one how to draw.
I believe that happiness consists in having a destiny in keeping with our abilities. Our desires are things of the moment, often harmful even to ourselves; but our abilities are permanent, and their demands never cease.
The sense of this word among the Greeks affords the noblest definition of it; enthusiasm signifies 'God in us.'
Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.
