I am not in the least surprised that your impression of death becomes more lively, in proportion as age and infirmity bring it nearer. God makes use of this rough trial to undeceive us in respect to our courage, to make us feel our weakness, and to keep us in all humility in His hands.

To pray is to desire; but it is to desire what God would have us desire.

A good historian is timeless; although he is a patriot, he will never flatter his country in any respect.

Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses his remedies

It is often our own imperfection which makes us reprove the imperfection of others; a sharp-sighted self-love of others

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Oh! how seldom the soul is silent, in order that God may speak.