There are some chagrins of the heart which a friend ought to try to console without betraying a knowledge of their existence, as there are physical maladies which a physician ought to seek to heal without letting the sufferer know that he has discovered their extent.

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

Religion converts despair, which destroys, into resignation, which submits.

A profound knowledge of life is the least enviable of all species of knowledge, because it can only be acquired by trials that make us regret the loss of our ignorance.

Superstition is only the fear of belief, while religion is the confidence.

Grief is, of all the passions, the one that is the most ingenious and indefatigable in finding food for its own subsistence.

People seem to lose all respect for the past; events succeed each other with such velocity that the most remarkable one of a few years gone by, is no more remembered than if centuries had closed over it.