“When a man resolves to avenge himself, he should first of all tear out the heart from his breast.”

In every country where independence has taken the place of liberty, the first desire of a manly heart is to possess a weapon which at once renders him capable of defence or attack, and, by rendering its owner fearsome, makes him feared.

Joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow.

I am hungry, feed me; I am bored, amuse me.

We’ll go where the air is pure, where all sounds are soothing, where, no matter how proud one may be, one feels humble and finds oneself small- in short, we’ll go to the sea. I love the sea as one loves a mistress and I long for her when I haven’t seen her for some time

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

God is full of mercy for everyone, as He has been towards you. He is a father before He is a judge.

There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body’s sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.

There are misfortunes in life that no one will accept; people would rather believe in the supernatural and the impossible.

Misfortune does not help us to believe.

All for one and one for all, united we stand divided we fall.

Often we pass beside happiness without seeing it, without looking at it, or even if we have seen and looked at it, without recognizing it.

You scholars, you’re in communication with the devil.

Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.

Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.

So he went down, smiling sceptically and mutter the final word in human wisdom: ‘Perhaps!

How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure!