The passions are the seeds of vices as well as of virtues, from which either may spring, accordingly as they are nurtured. Unhappy they who have never been taught the art to govern them!

Do you believe your heart to be, indeed, so hardened, that you can look without emotion on the suffering, to which you would condemn me?

Such is the inconsistency of real love, that it is always awake to suspicion, however unreasonable; always requiring new assurances from the object of its interest.

There is some comfort in dying surrounded by one's children.

What has a man's face to do with his character? Can a man of good character help having a disagreeable face?

And since, in our passage through this world, painful circumstances occur more frequently than pleasing ones, and since our sense of evil is, I fear, more acute than our sense of good, we become the victims of our feelings, unless we can in some degree command them.

One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world.