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

We study ourselves three weeks, we love each other three months, we squabble three years, we tolerate each other thirty years, and then the children start all over again.

A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains.

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.

There are as many kinds of modesty as there are races. To the English woman it is a duty; to the French woman a propriety.

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

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.