There is nothing at all in life, except what we put there.

Silence is like nightfall. Objects are lost in it insensibly.

Men are always invoking justice; yet it is justice which should make them tremble.

Antiquity is a species of aristocracy with which it is not easy to be on visiting terms.

All the joys of earth will not assuage our thirst for happiness; while a single grief suffices to shroud life in a sombre veil, and smite it with nothingness at all points.

A friendship will be young after the lapse of half a century; a passion is old at the end of three months.

Only those faults which we encounter in ourselves are insufferable to us in others.