Happiness consists not in having much, but in being content with little.

Society seldom forgives those who have discovered the emptiness of its pleasures, and who can live independent of it and them.

Society punishes not the vices of its members, but their detection.

Flowers are the bright remembrances of youth; they waft us back, with their bland odorous breath, the joyous hours that only young life knows, ere we have learnt that this fair earth hides graves.

The vices of the rich and great are mistaken for error; and those of the poor and lowly, for crimes.

Modern historians are all would-be philosophers; who, instead of relating facts as they occurred, give us their version, or rather perversions of them, always colored by their political prejudices, or distorted to establish some theory . . .

Mediocrity is beneath a brave soul.