Have friends, not for the sake of receiving, but of giving.

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

What is experience? A poor little hut constructed from the ruins of the palace of gold and marble called our illusions.

Like those statues which must be made larger than "nature" in order that, viewed from below, or from a distance, they may appear to be of the "natural" size, certain truths must be "strained" in order that the public may form a just idea of them.

No labor is hopeless.

History, if thoroughly comprehended, furnishes something of the experience which a man would acquire who should be a contemporary of all ages and a fellow citizen of all peoples.

Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.