"I replace melancholy by courage, doubt by certainty, despair by hope, malice by good, complaints by duty, scepticism …"

"God grant that the reader, emboldened and having become at present as fierce as what he is reading, find, without los…"

"I hail you, old ocean! Old ocean, you are the symbol of identity: always equal unto yourself. In essence, you never c…"

"There are those whose purpose in writing is, by means of the noble qualities of heart which their imagination invents…"

"After some hours, the dogs, exhausted by running round, almost dead, their tongues hanging out, set upon one another …"

"I will leave no memoirs."

"Non, La Harpe au Serpent n'a jamais ressemble; Le Serpent siffle, et La Harpe est sifflé."

"Chloé, belle et poète, a deux petits travers: Elle fait son visage et ne fait pas ses vers."

"Bon Dieu! l'aimable siècle où l'homme dit à l'homme, Soyons frères—ou je t'assomme."

"L'esprit est le dieu des instans, Le génie est le dieu des âges."