A well-born man is fortunate, but so is the man about whom people no longer ask, 'is he well-born?'

When what you read elevates your mind and fills you with noble aspirations, look for no other rule by which to judge a book; it is good, and is the work of a master-hand.

Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life. It is only found in men of sound sense and understanding.

Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them; but it serves as an adornment to those who have filled their lives with great deeds: they might be compared to some beauty carelessly dressed and thereby all the more attractive.

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

To what excesses do men rush for the sake of religion, of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard!

A good author, and one who writes carefully, often discovers that the expression of which he has been in search without being able to discover it, and which he has at last found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and which seems as if it ought to have presented itself at once, without effort, to the mind.