No labor is hopeless.

There is a slowness in affairs which ripens them, and a slowness which rots them.

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 vital air of friendship is composed of confidence. Friendship perishes in proportion as this air diminishes.

As long as we love, we lend to the beloved object qualities of mind and heart which we deprive him of when the day of misunderstanding arrives.

The chief cause of our misery is less the violence of our passions than the feebleness of our virtues.

Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.