We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.

True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.

Up to a certain point every man is what he thinks he is.

The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.

My external sensations are no less private to my self than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside... the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.

His mind is so open - so open that ideas simply pass through it.

Where everything is bad it must be good to know the worst.