The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.

A society in which marriage is encouraged and industry prevails soon repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war.

There is more pleasure to building castles in the air than on the ground.

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave.

The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.

[The] liberty of divorce does not contribute to happiness and virtue. The facility of separation would destroy all mutual confidence, and inflame every trifling dispute . . .

The desire of perfection became the ruling passion of their soul; and it is well known, that while reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes.