[After being corrected by a grammarian for using the feminine pronoun instead of the pseudogeneric masculine:] As you please, but for my part, if I were to express myself so, I should fancy I had a beard.

When we reckon without Providence, we must frequently reckon twice.

I do not like to employ secretaries that have more wit than myself. I am afraid to make them write all my nonsense.

The world has no long injustices.

. . . long journeys are strange things: if we were always to continue in the same mind we are in at the end of a journey, we should never stir from the place we were then in . . .

It is thus that we walk through the world like the blind, not knowing whither we are going, regarding as bad what is good, regarding as good what is bad, and ever in entire ignorance.

war often breaks out when there is the most talk of peace.