If it were not for respect to human opinions, I would not open my window to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, whilst I would go five hundred leagues to talk with a man of genius whom I had not seen.
La musique seule est d’une noble inutilité, et c’est pour cela qu’elle nous émeut si profondément; plus elle est loin de tout but, plus elle se rapproche de cette source intime de nos pensées que l’application à un objet quelconque reserve dans son cours—Music alone is nobly non-utilitarian, and that is why it moves us so profoundly; the further it is removed from serving any purpose, the nearer it approaches that inner spring of our thoughts which the application to any object whatever hampers in its course.
Superstition is related to this life, religion to the next; superstition allies itself to fatality, religion to virtue; it is by the vitality of earthly desires we become superstitious, and by the sacrifice of these desires that we become religious.
We must not judge of despots by the temporary successes which the possession of power enabled them to achieve, but by the state in which they leave their country at their death or at their fall.
