It is wisdom to believe the heart.

A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.

To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation; to elude oneself is the romantic.

There is no dunce like a mature dunce.

There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.

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

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.