The beings who appear cold, but are only timid, adore where they dare to love.
Virtue is the daughter of Religion; Repentance, her adopted child,--a poor orphan who, without the asylum which she offers, would not know where to hide her sole treasure, her tears!
Friendship is like those ancient altars where the unhappy, and even the guilty, found a sure asylum.
Men do not go out to meet misfortune as we do. They learn it; and we--we divine it.
God Himself allows certain faults; and often we say, "I have deserved to err; I have deserved to be ignorant.
True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.
My sole defense against the natural horror which death inspires is to love beyond it.
Resignation is, to some extent, spoiled for me by the fact that it is so entirely conformable to the laws of common-sense. I should like just a little more of the supernatural in the practice of my favorite virtue.
There are but two future verbs which man may appropriate confidently and without pride: "I shall suffer," and "I shall die.
The law of common sense.
People read every thing nowadays, except books.
All the joys of earth will not assuage our thirst for happiness; while a single grief suffices to shroud life in a sombre veil, and smite it with nothingness at all points.
One must be a somebody before they can have an enemy. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force.
Since there must be chimeras, why is not perfection the chimera of all men?
There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all.
Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.
Faith, amid the disorders of a sinful life, is like the lamp burning in an ancient tomb.
The most dangerous of all flattery is the inferiority of those about us.
There are two ways of attaining an important end, force and perseverance; the silent power of the latter grows irresistible with time.
Indifferent souls never part. Impassioned souls part, and return to one another, because they can do no better.
Let us shun everything, which might tend to efface the primitive lineaments of our individuality. Let us reflect that each one of us is a thought of God.
Prayer has a right to the word "ineffable." It is an hour of outpourings which words cannot express,--of that interior speech which we do not articulate, even when we employ it.
If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.
Where there is a question of economy, I prefer privation.
The Christian's God is a God of metamorphoses. You cast grief into his bosom: you draw thence, peace. You cast in despair: 'tis hope that rises to the surface. It is a sinner whose heart he moves. It is a saint who returns him thanks.
