All of our miseries prove our greatness. They are the miseries of a dethroned monarch.

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.

Our senses perceive no extreme. Too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great distance or proximity hinders ourview. Too great length and too great brevity of discourse tends to obscurity; too much truth is paralyzing.... In short, extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them.

There are two types of mind . . . the mathematical, and what might be called the intuitive. The former arrives at its views slowly, but they are firm and rigid; the latter is endowed with greater flexibility and applies itself simultaneously to the diverse lovable parts of that which it loves.

Reverend Fathers, my letters did not usually follow each other at such close intervals, nor were they so long.... This one would not be so long had I but the leisure to make it shorter.

All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

Man is so made that by continually telling him he is a fool he believes it, and by continually telling it to himself he makes himself believe it. For man holds an inward talk with himself, which it pays him to regulate.