Habit will reconcile us to everything but change

It may be observed of good writing, as of good blood, that it is much easier to say what it is composed of than to compose it.

This world cannot explain its own difficulties without the assistance of another.

Some reputed saints that have been canonized ought to have been cannonaded.

Those who visit foreign nations, but who associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs 'caelum non animum mutant': they see new meridians, but the same men, and with heads as empty as their pockets.

The pride of ancestry is a superstructure of the most imposing height, but resting on the most flimsy foundation. It is ridiculous enough to observe the hauteur with which the old nobility look down on the new. The reason of this puzzled me a little, until I began to reflect that most titles are respectable only because they are old; if new, they would be despised, because all those who now admire the grandeur of the stream would see nothing but the impurity of the source.

The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number.