It is worse to apprehend than to suffer.

There are some extraordinary fathers, who seem, during the whole course of their lives, to be giving their children reasons for being consoled at their death.

All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet's bombast!

Days, months, years fly away, and irrecoverably sink in the abyss of time.

It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform to other men's opinions than to bring them over to ours.

Praise, of all things, is the most powerful excitement to commendable actions, and animates us in our enterprises.