“Earnestness is the salt of eloquence.”

“Kings are for nations in their swaddling-clothes: France has attained her majority.”

“In the vast cosmical changes, the universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, ... sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and ... entangling, from the highest to the lowest, all activities in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism, hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth... Enormous gearing, whose first motor is the gnat, and whose last wheel is the zodiac.”

“The poetic element lying hidden in most women is the source of their magnetic attraction.”

“Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.”

“How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!”

“It is a wise father that knows his own child.”

“If it be you that stirs these daughters' heartsAgainst their father, fool me not so muchTo bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,And let not women's weapons, water drops,Stain my man's cheeks.”