People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

Good criticism is very rare and always precious.

We surround ourselves with the true image of ourselves.

Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are ... punished by fear.

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.