The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you.

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

A guilty man is punished as an example for the mob; an innocent man convicted is the business of every honest citizen.

I do not doubt but that genuine piety is the spring of peace of mind; it enables us to bear the sorrows of life, and lessens the pangs of death: the same cannot be said of hypocrisy.

Make me chaste and To what excesses will men not go for the sake of a religion in which they believe so little and which they practice so imperfectly!

Criticism is as often a trade as a science, requiring, as it does, more health than wit, more labour than capacity, more practice than genius.

Such a great misfortune, not to be able to be alone.