Often the losing of a battle leads to the winning of progress. Less glory but greater liberty: the drum is silent and the voices of reason can be heard.

The men of yesterday are spectres; those of to-morrow are forms. The eye of the spirit distinguishes them but obscurely. The embryonic work of the future is one of the visions of philosophy.

A compliment is like a kiss through a veil.

Bestow on an individual the useless and deprive him of the necessary, and you have the gamin.

There are moments when a rope's end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, and fall like a ripe fruit.

For the rest, he was the same to all men, the fashionable world and the ordinary people. He judged nothing in haste, or without taking account of the cirumstances. He said, 'Let me see how the fault arose.

To contemplate is to look at shadows.