“It is delightful to transport one's self into the spirit of the past, to see how a wise man has thought before us.”

“If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.”

“Is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason or after he has lost it?”

“What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!”

“We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.”

“That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way as us.”

“This is the true measure of love: when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will ever love in the same way after us.”