Your intelligence often bears the same relation to your heart as the library of a chateau does to its owner.

Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.

There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.

All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.

It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged.

It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely paralyse before we can live happily in this world.

In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. 'Tis a necessary evil.