The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.

The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell.

Our faith in others betrays that we would rather have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we want merely to overcome envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

Antithesis is the narrow gateway through which error most prefers to worm its way towards truth.

Nothing ever succeeds which exuberant spirits have not helped to produce.

Good manners disappear in proportion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly observed from decade to decade by those who have an eye for public behavior, which grows visibly.