The most culpable of the excesses of Liberty is the harm she does herself.

I like people to be saints; but I want them to be first and superlatively honest men.

By becoming unhappy, we sometimes learn how to be less so.

Virtue is the daughter of Religion; Repentance, her adopted child,--a poor orphan who, without the asylum which she offers, would not know where to hide her sole treasure, her tears!

There are minds constructed like the eyes of certain insects, which discern, with admirable distinctness, the most delicate lineaments and finest veins of the leaf which bears them, but are totally unable to take in the ensemble of the plant or shrub. When error has effected an entrance into such minds, it remains there impregnable, because no general view assists them in throwing off the chance impression of the moment.

We do not judge men by what they are in themselves, but by what they are relatively to us.

To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think is to weave them into garlands.