“We are never quits with those who oblige us,” was Dantes’ reply; “for when we do not owe them money, we owe them gratitude.”

Life is a storm. One minute you will bathe under the sun and the next you will be shattered upon the rocks. That’s when you shout, “Do your worst, for I will do mine!” and you will be remembered forever.

Youth is a blossom whose fruit is love; happy is he who plucks it after watching it slowly ripen.

To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.

It is only the dead who do not return.

Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will find a difficulty in understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reason.

Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.

In love, writing is dangerous, not to mention pointless.

Tell the angel who will watch over your life to pray now and then for a man who, like Satan, believed himself for an instant to be equal to God, but who realized in all humility that supreme power and wisdom are in the hands of God alone.

Here is your final lesson – do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, “Vengeance is mine.” […] He believes in you.

So much the worse for those who fear wine, for it is because they have some bad thoughts which they are afraid the liquor will extract from their hearts.

You who are in power have only the means that money produces – we who are in expectation, have those which devotion prompts.

In this world, all–men, women, and kings–must live for the present. We can only live for the future for God

It is rare that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.

One’s work may be finished someday, but one’s education never.

Now I’d like someone to tell me there is no drama in real life!

That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate?

I believe it is my obligation to tell the story of the civil rights movement to the next generation.

I believe in freedom of speech, but I also believe that we have an obligation to condemn speech that is racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, or hateful.

A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all.

Better poverty without a care than wealth with its many obligations.

You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.

I never thought of losing, but now that it’s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

I want to wake up every day and do whatever comes in my mind, and not feel pressure or obligations to do anything else in my life.

To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.