We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.

When the painter wishes to represent an event, he cannot place before us too great a number of personages; but he cannot employ too few when he wishes to portray an emotion.

If fortune wishes to make a man estimable, she gives him virtues; if she wishes to make him esteemed, she gives him success.

The Bible is to religion what the Iliad is to poetry

The simple-hearted and sincere never do more than half deceive themselves.

We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things.

Know that morality is a curb, not a spur.