Besides, I myself have now for a long time ceased to look for anything more beautiful in this world, or more interesting, than the truth; or at least… - Maurice Maeterlinck

Treasures have perished that were numbered among the noblest and dearest possessions of mankind; monuments have disappeared which nothing can replace; and the half of a nation, among all nations the most attached to its old simple habits, its humble homes, is at present wandering along the roads of Europe. Thousands of innocent people have been massacred; and of those who remain nearly all are doomed to poverty and hunger.

since the days of the great martyrs, that woman was ready with the same gift of self, the same patience, the same sacrifices, the same greatness of soul and was about — less perhaps in blood than in tears, for it is always on her that sorrow ends by falling — to prove herself the rival and the peer of man.

If I tell some one that I love him – as I may have told a hundred others – my words will convey nothing to him; but the silence which will ensue, if I do indeed love him, will make clear in what depths lie the roots of my love, and will in its turn give birth to a conviction, that shall itself be silent; and in the course of a lifetime, this silence and this conviction will never again be the same. …