The bitterness of the potion, and the abhorrence of the patient are necessary circumstances to the operation. It must be something to trouble and disturb the stomach that must purge and cure it.

A foreign war is a lot milder than a civil war.

The religion of my doctor or my lawyer cannot matter. That consideration has nothing in common with the functions of the friendship they owe me.

We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.

Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself.

Glory consists of two parts: the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others.

It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass; which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded.