La máquina de 1792, la guillotina, inventada para suprimir toda resistncia contra el Estado, es una herramienta torpe comparada con la maquinaria policíaca, combinada y refinada por la superioridad es...
Fouché) tan invisible y activo como el mecanismo de un reloj.
Ceux qui tombent entraînent souvent dans leur chuteceux qui se portent à leur secours.
Wie ich heimschritt bemerkte ich mit einemmal vor mir meinen eigenen Schatten so wie ich den Schatten des anderen Krieges hinter dem jetzigen sah. Er ist durch all diese Zeit nicht mehr von mir gewich...
Nothing whets the intelligence more than a passionate suspicion, nothing develops all the faculties of an immature mind more than a trail running away into the dark.
The power of love is not properly gauged if it is estimated only by the object that inspires it, if the tension preceding it is not taken into account--that gloomy space of disillusionment and lonelin...
He sensed the presence of death, he sensed the presence of undying love: something broke open inside him, and he thought of the invisible woman, incorporeal and passionate, as one might think of dista...
For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rej...
One must be convinced to convince, to have enthusiasm to stimulate the others.
My child died last night—and now I shall be alone again, if I must really go on living. They will come tomorrow, strange, hulking, black-clad men bringing a coffin, and they will put him in it, my poo...
Nothing on earth puts more pressure on the human mind than nothing.
L'ammirare esteticamente il talento in ogni sua forma porta irresistibilmente ad analizzare se stessi, per vedere se nel proprio fisico ancora misterioso o nell'anima ancora semisvelata non vi sia tra...
One can't have literary comprehension without real experience, mere grammatical knowledge of the words is useless without recognition of their values, and when you young people want to understand a co...
In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.
We are happy when people/things conform and unhappy when they don't. People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do. It is my model of reality that determines my happiness or disappoi...
She could be lively only in the midst of life; in isolation she dwindled to a shadow.
And the child—your child—was born there in the midst of misery. It was a deadly place: strange, everything was strange, we women lying there were strange to each other, lonely and hating one another o...
Le parece maravilloso verse envuelta por la ardiente muchedumbre, dejarse amar por ese desconocido pueblo; en adelante sigue disfrutando de este amor de veinte millones de criaturas como de un derecho...
In so much firm, pleasure-loving flesh, we cannot find the merest trace of a moral nervous system. That explains the whole enigma of Casanova's subtle genius. Lucky man that he is, he has only sensual...
La vérité à demi ne vaut rien, il la faut toujours entière.