All the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected man's natural sentiment in the face of death.

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

Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.

My soul hates the fool whose only passion is to live by rule.

The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested, compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.

Manhood and sagacity ripen of themselves; it suffices not to repress or distort them.

For a man who has done his natural duty, death is as natural as sleep.