“I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.”

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

I have never thought, for my part, that man’s freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.

It is a great evil for a Chief of a nation to be born the enemy of the freedom whose defender he should be.

Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.

Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?

I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society’s fault.

If force compels obedience, there is no need to invoke a duty to obey, and if force ceases to compel obedience, there is no longer any obligation.

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up!

My love for imaginary objects and my facility in lending myself to them ended by disillusioning me with everything around me, and determined that love of solitude which I have retained ever since that time.

My love for imaginary objects and my facility in lending myself to them ended by disillusioning me with everything around me, and determined that love of solitude which I have retained ever since that time.

I am a hundred times happier in my solitude than I could be if I lived among them.

In respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.

God hasn’t made anything yet you couldn’t conquer.

And I thank God I believe in God, or I would probably be enormously angry right now.

I have God in my words and the devil in my ear, and a sister who keeps telling me to find my magic.

For although God is right with us and in us and out of us and all through us, we have to go on journeys to find him.

For me, God is cold.

They please the world most, who please Christ least.

Nothing gives us a greater idea of our soul, than that God has given us, at the moment of our birth, an angel to take care of it.

When I sit near the ocean in the morning and write my verses and breathe the salty wind which is coming from the water, I rejoice in God and I am blissful, as I was as a child.