The art of pleasing is more based on the art of seeming pleased than people think of, and she disarmed the prejudices of her enemies by the unaffected delight she appeared to take in themselves.

One must pray first, but afterwards one must help oneself. God does not care for cowards.

Imagination without culture is crippled and moves slowly; but it can be pure imagination, and rich also, as folk-lore will tell the vainest.

Love, the one supreme, unceasing source of human felicity, the one sole joy which lifts the whole mortal existence into the empyrean, was by it [Christianity] degraded into the mere mechanical action of reproduction.

A pipe is a pocket philosopher,--a truer one than Socrates, for it never asks questions. Socrates must have been very tiresome, when one thinks of it.

The world never leaves one in ignorance or in peace.

There is nothing that you may not get people to believe in if you will only tell it them loud enough and often enough, till the welkin rings with it.