Most of our occupations are low comedy.... We must play our part duly, but as the part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and appearance we must not make a real essence, nor of what is foreign what is our very own.

Glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.

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.

It is not a mind, it is not a body that we educate, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him.

Wise men have more to learn of fools than fools of wise men.

It is a stupid presumption to go about despising and condemning as false anything that seems to us improbable; this is a common fault in those who think they have more intelligence than the crowd.

There is a certain amount of purpose, acquiescence, and satisfaction in nursing one's melancholy.