Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.

There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good.

Abstract truth is the eye of reason.

I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.

If there wasn't a God we would have to invent one to keep people sane.

Many men, seemingly impelled by fortune, hasten forward to meet misfortune half way.