A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend towhat addresses the senses.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them.

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I'm not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul.