It is an aspect of all happiness to suppose that we deserve it.

To reason, to argue. It is to walk with crutches in search of the truth. We come to it with a leap.

Know that morality is a curb, not a spur.

Today there are no more irreconcilable enmities, because there are no more disinterested emotions: that's a good thing born from a bad thing.

A fluent writer always seems more talented than he is. To write well, one needs a natural felicity and an acquired difficulty.

Children must be rendered reasonable, but not reasoners. The first thing to teach them is that it is reasonable for them to obey, and unreasonable for them to dispute.

Without duty, life is sort of boneless; it cannot hold itself together.