Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation... when I consider all this... I am silent.

Reasonable men are the best dictionaries of conversation.

No limit, no definition, may restrict the range or depth of the human spirit's passage into its own secrets or the world's.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

We blame equally him who is too proud to put a proper value on his own merit and him who prizes too highly his spurious worth.

Everything we do has a result. But that which is right and prudent does not always lead to good, nor the contrary to what is bad.