It was less envy than justice that revolted in her.

Superior beings have their places marked out by nature, and every thing that keeps them from occupying them, seems to them an usurpation.
They find society frequently the reverse of nature, and take their revenge by despising it: from this arises the hatred of genius against power.

Genius dreams of an order of things, in which the ranks should be marked out by nature and virtue; whilst in reality they are almost always derived from birth--that blind allotment of fate.

There are few great minds which do not feel in their earliest progress the persecution of fortune, and who do not begin by an internal revolt against society.
They are only quieted by their own discouragement.

Some are resigned from a more lofty feeling to the place which God assigns to them.