Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.

Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.

Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.

Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence.

The sceptic, when he plunges into the depths of infidelity, like the miser who leaps from the shipwreck, will find that the treasures which he bears about him will only sink him deeper in the abyss.