The voice is a human sound which nothing inanimate can perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an insinuating property which writing lacks. It is not merely so much air, but air modulated and impregnated with life.

The beautiful invariably possesses a visible and a hidden beauty; and it is certain that no style is so beautiful as that which presents to the attentive reader a half-hidden meaning.

It would be next to impossible to discover a handsome woman who was not also a vain woman.

If you would live happily, do not exaggerate life's evils, nor slight her blessings.

Poetry is to be found nowhere unless we carry it within us.

I do not call reason that brutal reason which crushes with its weight what is holy and sacred, that malignant reason which delights in the errors it succeeds in discovering, that unfeeling and scornful reason which insults credulity.

In bringing up a child, think of its old age.