The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

We seek our happiness outside ourselves, and in the opinion of men we know to be flatterers, insincere, unjust, full of envy, caprice and prejudice.

Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar.

From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.

Party loyalty lowers the greatest men to the petty level of the masses.

Piety with some people, but especially with women, is either a passion, or an infirmity of age, or a fashion which must be followed.

I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity.