Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavour to understand him.

There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.

Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic Christendom - picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode - may be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair.

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.

As widowers proverbially marry again, so a man with the habit of friendship always finds new friends.

Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.