Morality must guide calculation, and calculation must guide politics.

Taste is to literature what bon ton is in society.

[On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.

Love which is only an episode in the life of men, is the entire history of the life of women.

The sight of such a monument is like continual and stationary music, which one hears for one's good as one approaches it.

New doctrines ever displease the old. They like to fancy that the world has been losing wisdom, instead of gaining it, since they were young.

If it were not for respect for human opinions, I would not open my window to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, whilst I would go five hundred leagues to talk with a man of genius whom I had not seen.