In the stormy current of life characters are weights or floats which at one time make us glide along the bottom, and at another maintain us on the surface.

The search for causes must come after the collection of facts.

History is nothing but a problem of mechanics applied to psychology.

Amid this vast and overwhelming space and in these boundless solar archipelagoes, how small is our own sphere, and the earth, what a grain of sand!

Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross.

Change a virtue in its circumstances find it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges.

In the stormy current of life characters are weights or floats which at one time make us glide along the bottom, and at another maintain us on the surface.