Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.

The sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanity's.

Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfillments; each of its joys ripens into a new want.

Every individual strives to grow and exclude, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature.

We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.

The religion of England is part of good-breeding. When you see on the continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassador's chapel and put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed hat, you cannot help feeling how much national pride prays with him, and the religion of a gentleman.

Let him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates by others eyes.