Religion must be loved as a kind of country and nursing-mother. It was religion that nourished our virtues, that showed us heaven, that taught us to walk in the path of duty.
We use up in the passions the stuff that was given us for happiness.
What a man knows only through feeling can be explained only through enthusiasm.
The supreme sway of chastity over the senses makes her queenly.
A thought is a thing as real as a cannonball.
A fluent writer always seems more talented than he is. To write well, one needs a natural felicity and an acquired difficulty.