“I do not cling to life sufficiently to fear death.”

“True love always makes a man better, no matter what woman inspires it.”

“Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and that is half the battle.”

“There is something so awe-inspiring in great afflictions that even in the worst times the first emotion of a crowd has generally been to sympathise with the sufferer in a great catastrophe.”

“The king! I thought he was philosopher enough to allow that there was no murder in politics. In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas - no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.”

“There are some situations which men understand by instinct, by which reason is powerless to explain; in such cases the greatest poet is he who gives utterance to the most natural and vehement outburst of sorrow. Those who hear the bitter cry are as much impressed as if they listened to an entire poem, and when th sufferer is sincere they are right in regarding his outburst as sublime.”

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

“You are my son Dantés! You are the child of my captivity. My priestly office condemned me to celibacy: God sent you to me both to console the man who could not be a father and the prisoner who could not be free”

“He was thinking alone, and seriously racking his brain to find a direction for this single force four times multiplied, with which he did not doubt, as with the lever for which Archimedes sought, they should succeed in moving the world, when some one tapped gently at his door.”

“How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.”

“Infatuated, half through conceit, half through love of my art, I achieve the impossible working as no one else ever works.”