Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave.

Even when we fancy we have grown wiser, it is only, it may be, that new prejudices have displaced old ones.

Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses.

In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.

The worst deluded are the self-deluded.

Activity and sadness are incompatible.

God, we are told, looked upon the world after he had created it and pronounced it good; but ascetic pietists, in their wisdom, cast their eyes over it, and substantially pronounce it a dead failure, a miserable production, a poor concern.