Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults, a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.

Democracy means despair of finding any heroes to govern you, and contented putting up with the want of them

We only understand that which already within us.

In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.

Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.

Life is short. Be swift to love! Make haste to be kind!

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

Woman is the salvation or the destruction of the family. She carries its destiny in the folds of her mantle.

Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh, that is to say over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of illness, of loneliness and of death. There is no real...

There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.

A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be...

Whenever conscience speaks with a divided, uncertain, and disputed voice, it is not the voice of God. Descend still deeper into yourself, until you hear nothing but a clear, undivided voice, a voice which does...

Order is power.

For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.

The great artist is the simplifier.