“If it is ones lot to be cast among fools, one must learn foolishness.”

What a fool I was, not to tear my heart out on the day when I resolved to revenge myself!

We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you.

I came to Paris with four écus in my pocket, and I’d have fought with anybody who told me I was in no condition to buy the Louvre.

Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.

Mastery of language affords one remarkable opportunities.

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.

For the happy man prayer is only a jumble of words, until the day when sorrow comes to explain to him the sublime language by means of which he speaks to God.

There are people who are willing to suffer and swallow their tears at leisure, and God will no doubt reward them in heaven for their resignation; but those who have the will to struggle strike back at fate in retaliation for the blows they receive.

Truly generous men are always ready to become sympathetic when their enemy’s misfortune surpasses the limits of their hatred.

The friends we have lost do not repose under the ground, they are buried deep in our hearts. It has been thus ordained that they may always accompany us.

Pain, thou art not an evil.

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

Haste is a poor counselor.

Time, dear friend, time brings round opportunity; opportunity is the martingale of man. The more we have ventured the more we gain, when we know how to wait.

Great is truth. Fire cannot burn it nor water drown it.

Oh! The good times when we were so unhappy.

If we make a great show of respect and love to God, in the outward actions, while there is no sincerity in the heart, it is but hypocrisy and practical lying unto the Holy One.

It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.

Here lies one who neither flattered nor feared any flesh.

If you never change your mind, why have one?

The traces of upheavals become more impressive when one moves a little higher, when one gets even closer to the foot of the great mountain ranges. There are still plenty of shell layers. We notice them, even thicker and more solid ones.

Occupy your mind with good thoughts, or the enemy will fill them with bad ones.

God’s purpose for my life was that I have a passion for God’s glory and that I have a passion for my joy in that glory, and that these two are one passion.

All organs of an animal form a single system, the parts of which hang together, and act and re-act upon one another; and no modifications can appear in one part without bringing about corresponding modifications in all the rest.