“Almost all our desires, when examined, contain something too shameful to reveal.”

If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.

Our mind is enriched by what we receive, our heart by what we give.

If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.

Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.

To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.

I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning.

During a wise man’s whole life, his destiny holds his philosophy in a state of siege.

Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.

Revolutions are not born of chance but of necessity.

Those who do not weep, do not see.

Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves.

Not being heard is no reason for silence.

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.

When love has fused and mingled two beings in sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned.

Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.

For to desire is better than to possess, the finality of the end was dreaded as deeply as it was desired.

I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.

The knowledge of God, the formation of ideas, the mastery of desire and passion, the distinction between that which is to be chosen and that which is to be rejected, all these man owes to his form.

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come!

Violence is born of the desire to escape oneself.

The wise man sets bounds even to his innocent desires.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.