The success of any man with any woman is apt to displease even his best friends.

The language of religion can alone suit every situation and every mode of feeling.

the last steps of life are ever slow and difficult.

Tombs decked by the arts can scarcely represent death as a formidable enemy; we do not, indeed, like the ancients, carve sports and dances in the sarcophagus, but thought is diverted from the bier by works that tell of immortality, even from the altar of death.

It is obvious that the most despotic forms of social organization would be suitable for inert men who are satisfied with the situation fate has placed them in, and that the most abstract form of democratic theory would be practicable among sages guided only by their reason. The only problem is to what degree it is possible to excite or to contain the passions without endangering public happiness.

We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.

Gaiety pleases more when we are assured that it does not cover carelessness.