What a wonderful thing it is that drop of seed, from which we are produced, bears in itself the impressions, not only of the bodily shape, but of the thoughts and inclinations of our fathers!

The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.

Since we cannot match it let us take our revenge by abusing it.

Nature clasps all her creatures in a universal embrace; there is not one of them which she has not plainly furnished with all means necessary to the conservation of its being.

There is some shadow of delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very lap of melancholy.

If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live.

The first distinction among men, and the first consideration that gave one precedence over another, was doubtless the advantage of beauty.