Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body.

The more humanity owes the poor man, the more society denies him.

It is often said that my heart is too open for my own good.

The first man to fence in a piece of land, saying "this is mine" and who found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see.

Politeness requires this thing; decorum that; ceremony has its forms, and fashion its laws, and these must always follow, never the promptings of our own nature.

Nature's instructions are always slow; those of men are generally premature.