Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.
A poet who is a bad man is a degraded being, baser and more culpable than a bad man who is not a poet.
I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores.
Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.
Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit.
The little people must be sacred to the big ones, and it is from the rights of the weak that the duty of the strong is comprised.
The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them.
How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.
Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.
Reaction - a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.
The first symptom of love in a young man is timidity; in a girl boldness.
One sometimes says: 'He killed himself because he was bored with life.' One ought rather to say: 'He killed himself because he was bored by lack of life.'
Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.
Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?
He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life.
I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary.
Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.
Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left.
The ox suffers, the cart complains.
To think is of itself to be useful; it is always and in all cases a striving toward God.
