What is experience? A poor little hut constructed from the ruins of the palace of gold and marble called our illusions.
Great dejection often follows great enthusiasm.
Length of saying makes languor of hearing.
The historian must be a poet; not to find, but to find again; not to breathe life into beings, into imaginary deeds, but in order to re-animate and revive that which has been; to represent what time and space have placed at a distance from us.
We distrust our heart too much, and our head not enough.
We are more conscious that a person is in the wrong when the wrong concerns ourselves.
Literature was formerly an art and finance a trade; today it is the reverse.
Since unhappiness excites interest, many, in order to render themselves interesting, feign unhappiness.
The orator is the mouth (os) of a nation.
Let us pray! God is just, he tries us; God is pitiful, he will comfort us; let us pray!
Everything that is exquisite hides itself.
Morality is the fruit of religion: to desire the former without the latter is to desire an orange without an orange-tree.
Great souls are harmonious.
Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.
When unhappy, one doubts everything when happy one doubts nothing.
The Holy Scriptures praise the dew of the morning and the dew of the evening; ros matutinum, ros serotinum! Happy is he who possesses the gift of tears! when young, he will bear flowers; when old, fruit!
No labor is hopeless.
Like those statues which must be made larger than "nature" in order that, viewed from below, or from a distance, they may appear to be of the "natural" size, certain truths must be "strained" in order that the public may form a just idea of them.
Persons of delicate taste endure stupid criticism better than they do stupid praise.
Certain names always awake certain prejudices.
The chief cause of our misery is less the violence of our passions than the feebleness of our virtues.
What is slander? A verdict of "guilty" pronounced in the absence of the accused, with closed doors, without defence or appeal, by an interested and prejudiced judge.
Friendship is the ideal; friends are the reality; reality always remains far apart from the ideal.
God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.
In youth one has tears without grief; in age, griefs without tears
We want our friend as a man of talent, less because he has talent than because he is our friend.
Have friends, not for the sake of receiving, but of giving.
Lofty mountains are full of springs; great hearts are full of tears.
God is a shower to the heart burned up with grief; God is a sun to the face deluged with tears.
The city does not take away, neither does the country give, solitude; solitude is within us.
What is love? two souls and one flesh; friendship? two bodies and one soul.
Generosity is more charitable than wealth.
Pleasure once tasted satisfies less than the desire experienced for its torments.
Friendship admits of difference of character, as love does that of sex.
Solitude vivifies, isolation kills.
The habit of prayer communicates a penetrating sweetness to the glance, the voice, the smile, the tears,--to all one says, or does, or writes.
As long as we love, we lend to the beloved object qualities of mind and heart which we deprive him of when the day of misunderstanding arrives.
At first we hope too much and later on, not enough.
We love justice greatly, and just men but little.
The philosopher spends in becoming a man the time which the ambitious man spends in becoming a personage.
A face which is always serene possesses a mysterious and powerful attraction: sad hearts come to it as to the sun to warm themselves again.
When orators and auditors have the same prejudices, those prejudices run a great risk of being made to stand for incontestable truths.
Evil often triumphs, but never conquers.
I look at what I have not and think myself unhappy; others look at what I have and think me happy.
Conscientious men are, almost everywhere, less encouraged than tolerated.
Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.
The vital air of friendship is composed of confidence. Friendship perishes in proportion as this air diminishes.
History, if thoroughly comprehended, furnishes something of the experience which a man would acquire who should be a contemporary of all ages and a fellow citizen of all peoples.
Interest, ambition, fortune, time, temper, love, all kill friendship.
That which we know is but little; that which we have a presentiment of is immense; it is in this direction that the poet outruns the learned man.
The man abandoned by his friends, one after another, without just cause, will acquire, the reputation of being hard to please, changeable, ungrateful, unsociable.
Not all of those to whom we do good love us, neither do all those to whom we do evil hate us.
Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know.
It is impossible to be just if one is not generous.
Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite impressions.
Education, properly understood, is that which teaches discernment.
To love is to choose.
That which deceives us and does us harm, also undeceives us and does us good.
We often experience more regret over the part we have left, than pleasure over the part we have preferred.