Morality is the fruit of religion: to desire the former without the latter is to desire an orange without an orange-tree.

It is impossible to be just if one is not generous.

Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.

A face which is always serene possesses a mysterious and powerful attraction: sad hearts come to it as to the sun to warm themselves again.

The city does not take away, neither does the country give, solitude; solitude is within us.

The historian must be a poet; not to find, but to find again; not to breathe life into beings, into imaginary deeds, but in order to re-animate and revive that which has been; to represent what time and space have placed at a distance from us.

The man abandoned by his friends, one after another, without just cause, will acquire, the reputation of being hard to please, changeable, ungrateful, unsociable.