The friend who holds up before me the mirror, conceals not my smallest faults, warns me kindly, reproves me affectionately, when I have not performed my duty, he is my friend, however little he may appear so. But if a man praises and lauds me, never reproves me, overlooks my faults, and forgives them before I have repented, he is my enemy, however much he may appear my friend.

All our science calculates with abstracted individual external marks, which do not touch the inner existence of any single thing

It is a hard but good law of fate, that as every evil, so every excessive power, wears itself out.

Everyone loves his own country, customs, language, wife, children, not because they are the best in the world, but because they are his established property, and he loves in them himself, and the labor he has bestowed on them. The working of revolutions, therefore, misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.

Those that embrace the entire universe with love, for the most part love nothing, but their narrow selves.

Touch not the flute when drums are sounding around; when fools have the word, the wise will be silent.

Man is a central creature between the animals, that is to say, the most perfect form, which unites the traits of all in the most complete epitome.