Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers.

How painful to give a gift to any person of sensibility, or of equality! It is next worst to receiving one

I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,--he has come under the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached.