Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.

Our aspirations are our possibilities.

There is nothing so minute, or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.

The liberty of using harmless pleasure will not be disputed; but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harmless.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.