Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world.

The old lose one of the greatest privileges of man, for they are no longer judged by their contemporaries.

Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.

He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.

If a poet would work politically, he must give himself up to a party; and so soon as he does that, he is lost as a poet.

To make something you have to be something.

What sort of faults may we retain, nay, even cherish in ourselves? Those faults which are rather pleasant than offensive to others.