Everything has been said, and we have come too late, now that men have been living and thinking for seven thousand years and more.

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

Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.

Genius and great abilities are often wanting; sometimes, only opportunities. Some deserve praise for what they have done; others for what they would have done.

The Great slight the men of wit, who have nothing but wit; the men of wit despise the Great, who have nothing but greatness; the good man pities them both, if with greatness or wit they have not virtue.

We meet With few utterly dull and stupid souls: the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between these two extremes: the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, and the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth.

When a secret is revealed, it is the fault of the man who confided it.