As long as men are liable to die and are desirous to live, a physician will be made fun of, but he will be well paid.

We wish to constitute all the happiness, or, if that cannot be, the misery of the one we love.

The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.

The sublime only paints the true, and that too in noble objects; it paints it in all its phases, its cause and its effect; it is the most worthy expression or image of this truth. Ordinary minds cannot find out the exact expression, and use synonymes.

It would be a kind of ferocity to reject indifferently all sorts of praise. One should be glad to have that which comes from good men who praise in sincerity things that are really praiseworthy.

It is boorish to live ungraciously: the giving is the hardest part; what does it cost to add a smile?

Misers are neither relations, nor friends, nor citizens, nor Christians, nor perhaps even human beings.