Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

The vulgar call good fortune that which really is produced by the calculations of genius.

In a world of infinite choice people are struggling to figure out what to do.

In the country, without any interference from the law, the agricultural life favors the permanence of families.

Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them - a cheerful, manly part, or a poor, drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers.

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.