“He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.”

Hatred is blind; rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself.

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.