The virtue of books is to be readable.

It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.

Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function; living is the functionary.

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

Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is - Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.