The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.

It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.

It is not enough for a landscape to be interesting in itself. Eventually there must be a moral and historic interest.

Every great action is extreme when it is undertaken. Only after it has been accomplished does it seem possible to those creatures of more common stuff.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.

To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face.