Kind words do not cost much. They never blister the tongue or lips. They make other people good-natured. They also produce their own image on men's souls, and a beautiful image it is.

All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions.... This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

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

Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.

As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.

Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?