“Could the word ‘iron’ be the root from which ‘irony’ is derived?”

“It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.”

“It is a false and dangerous situation which bases public power on private want, and roots the grandeur of the State in the suffering of the individual. It is a badly constituted grandeur which combines all the material elements, and into which no moral element enters.”

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”

“This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These in pace, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peep-hole on a level with the river's current, that box of stone closed with a lid of granite like a tomb, with this difference, that the dead man here was a living being, that soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls, --what declaimers!”

“Ma vie est une énigme dont ton nom est le mot. (My life is an enigma, of which your name is the word.)”

“Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.”