The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.

Sexual passion is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious... and consequently the concentration of all desire

One man is more concerned with the impression he makes on the rest of mankind, another with the impression the rest of mankind makes on him.

Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.

Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.