It is right to be content with what we have, never with what we are.

It is not because we have been free, but because we have a right to be free, that we ought to demand freedom. Justice and liberty have neither birth nor race, youth nor age.

The frivolous work of polished idleness.

Diffused knowledge immortalizes itself.

A vice utterly at variance with the happiness of him who harbors it, and, as such, condemned by self-love.

The feminine graces of Madame de Sevigne's genius are exquisitely charming; but the philosophy and eloquence of Madame de Stael are above the distinction of sex.

Every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues; and the fictions which taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed, utility.