Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.

Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.

The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age.

To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired.

For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old fashioned

It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility