When you talk yourself, you think how witty, how original, how acute you are; but when another does so, you are very apt to think only - What a crib from Rochefoucauld!

Fancy tortures more people than does reality

It is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams.

It needs a great nature to bear the weight of a great gratitude.

Most crimes are sanctioned in some form or other when they take grand names.

When passion and habit long lie in company it is only slowly and with incredulity that habit awakens to finds its companion fled, itself alone.

The Christian religion, outwardly and even in intention humble, does, without meaning it, teach man to regard himself as the most important of all created things. Man surveys the starry heavens and hears with his ears of the plurality of worlds; yet his religion bids him believe that his alone out of these innumerable spheres is the object of his master's love and sacrifice.