My errors are by now natural and incorrigible; but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.

Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.

God defend me from myself.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he, and I was I.

It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.

He whose mouth is out of taste says the wine is flat.

I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.