I remember the very thing that I do not wish to; I cannot forget the things I wish to forget.

There is, I know not how, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence; and this takes the deepest root, and is most discoverable, in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.

Let the punishment be proportionate to the offense.

The multitude of fools is a protection to the wise.

What is becoming is honest, and whatever is honest must always be becoming.