Many actions calculated to procure fame are not conducive to ultimate happiness.

With what astonishment and veneration may we look into our own souls, where there are such hidden stores of virtue and knowledge, such inexhaustible sources of perfection. We know not yet what we shall be, nor will it ever enter into the heart to conceive the glory that will be always in reserve for it.

I believe that everyone, some time or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters; in which case the invention prompts so readily that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the composition of another.

Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.

The English delight in Silence more than any other European Nation, if the Remarks which are made on us by Foreigners are true.

Fables take off from the severity of instruction, and enforce it at the same time that they conceal it.

For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we think ourselves most alone.