“If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself.”

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?

God is merciful to all, as he has been to you; he is first a father, then a judge.

So rapid is the flight of our dreams upon the wings of imagination.

Without reflecting that this is the only moment in which you can study character,” said the count; “on the steps of the scaffold death tears off the mask that has been worn through life, and the real visage is disclosed.