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.

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.

The pursuit of politics is religion, morality, and poetry all in one.

Genius inspires this thirst for fame: there is no blessing undesired by those to whom Heaven gave the means of winning it.

Nature, who permits no two leaves to be exactly alike, has given a still greater diversity to human minds. Imitation, then, is a double murder; for it deprives both copy and original of their primitive existence.

Life teaches much, but to all thinking persons it brings ever closer the will of God - not because their faculties decline, but on the contrary, because they increase.

Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.