I do not want an echo of myself from my children. I do not want to hear from them merely the reverberation of my own voice.

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.

In women's destiny everything goes downhill except for thought, whose immortal nature it is to keep constantly rising.

Anyone who can see as far as tomorrow in politics arouses the wrath of people who can see no farther than today.

Kindness and generosity ... form the true morality of human actions.

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

The study of history, it seems to me, leads to the conviction that all important events tend toward the same end - the civilization of mankind.