Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.

In all societies, it is advisable to associate if possible with the highest; not that the highest are always the best, but because, if disgusted there, we can descend at any time; but if we begin with the lowest, to ascend is impossible.

Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.

True goodness is not without that germ of greatness that can bear with patience the mistakes of the ignorant.

I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent.

It is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other; but if they are nothing in themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation.

There is no cruelty so inexorable and unrelenting as that which proceeds from a bigoted and presumptuous supposition of doing service to God. The victim of the fanatical persecutor will find that the stronger the motives he can urge for mercy are, the weaker will be his chance for obtaining it, for the merit of his destruction will be supposed to rise in value in proportion as it is effected at the expense of every feeling both of justice and of humanity.