A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.

Reasonable and vicious are quite consistent with each other, in fact, only through their union are great and far-reaching crimes possible

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over.

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.