This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside.

Numbers serve to discipline rhetoric. Without them it is too easy to follow flights of fancy, to ignore the world as it is and to remold it nearer the heart's desire.

Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of beat.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

It is very odd that Nature should be so unscrupulous. She is no saint . . .

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.