Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.

To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times.

Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.

The only substance properly so called is the soul.

We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.

The masses are the material of democracy, but its form-that is to say, the laws which express the general reason, justice, and utility-can only be rightly shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property.

Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.