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

To be capable of respect is almost as rare as to be worthy of it.

Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.

Forms of government become established of themselves. They shape themselves, they are not created. We may give them strength and consistency, but we cannot call them into being. Let us rest assured that the form of government can never be a matter of choice: it is almost always a matter of necessity.

Common sense suits itself to the ways of the world. Wisdom tries to confirm to the ways of heaven.

All disputation makes the mind deaf; and when people are deaf, I am dumb.

How many people eat, drink, and get married; buy, sell, and build; make contracts and attend to their fortune; have friends and enemies, pleasures and pains, are born, grow up, live and die - but asleep!