What can you possibly add to a mind that's full, especially one that's full of itself.

Maxims are to the intellect what laws are to actions; they do not enlighten, but they guide and direct, and, although themselves blind, are protective.

The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.

Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.

Xenophon wrote with a swan's quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and Thucydides with a brazen stylus.

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.

Criticism even should not be without its charms. When quite devoid of all amenities, it is no longer literary.