Most men, even the most accomplished, are of limited faculties; every one sets a value on certain qualities in himself and others: these alone he is willing to favour, these alone will he have cultivated.

Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe. She is always right, and the errors are always those of man.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

Human life-everybody lives it, but only to a few is it known.

In politics as on a sickbed men toss from side to side in hope of lying more comfortably.

Were not the eye made to receive the rays of the sun, it could not behold the sun; if the peculiar power of God lay not in us, how could the godlike charm us?

Nature does not suffer her veil to be taken from her, and what she does not choose to reveal to the spirit, thou wilt not wrest from her by levers and screws.