Each man forms his duty according to his predominant characteristic; the stern require an avenging judge; the gentle, a forgiving father. Just so the pygmies declared that Jove himself was a pygmy.

Love is the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy.

The Italians have voices like peacocks - German gives me a cold in the head - and Russian is nothing but sneezing

There is no such thing as luck. It's a fancy name for being always at our duty, and so sure to be ready when good time comes.

Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud--and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.

The Almighty proves his existence by creating.

Beautiful eyes in the face of a handsome woman are like eloquence to speech.