Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.

The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not than in those who know it.

It is an appalling thing to feel all one possesses drain away.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

Custom determines what is agreeable.

Those whom we call ancient were really new in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind.