It is much more easy to accuse the one sex than to excuse the other.

Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.

I am one of those who hold that poetry is never so blithe as in a wanton and irregular subject.

If people must be talking about me, I would have it to be truthfully and justly. I would willingly return from the next world to contradict any person who described me other than I was, although he did it to honour me.

The wise man should withdraw his soul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in freedom and power to judge things freely; but as for externals, he should wholly follow the accepted fashions and forms.

How often, being moved under a false cause, if the person offending makes a good defense and presents us with a just excuse, are we angry against truth and innocence itself?

The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.