The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added.

Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever.

Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.