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

A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.

Politeness does not always inspire goodness, equity, complaisance, and gratitude; it gives at least the appearance of these qualities, and makes man appear outwardly, as he should be within.

All the world says of a coxcomb that he is a coxcomb; but no one dares to say so to his face, and he dies without knowing it.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

The mind, like all other things, will become impaired, the sciences are its food,--they nourish, but at the same time they consume it.

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.