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.

The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.

The egotism of woman is always for two.

That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.

Who understands much forgives much. To understand everything makes us very forgiving.

When at eve, at the bounding of the landscape, the heavens appear to recline so slowly on the earth, imagination pictures beyond the horizon an asylum of hope, - a native land of love; and nature seems silently to repeat that man is immortal.

[Moralistic] novels are at the same disadvantage as teachers: children never believe them, because they make everything that happens relate to the lesson at hand.