None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.

True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.

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.

We ask advice but we mean approbation.

Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.