Education must have two foundations --morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defense for self against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists.

The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.

In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.

Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society. We do not go to market with ingots, but with silver and small change.

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?

In the library of the world men have hitherto been ranged according to the form, and the binding; the time is coming when they will take rank and order according to their contents and intrinsic merits.