Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.

Not all citizens can be equally strong; but they can all be equally free.

The rude beginnings of every art acquire a greater celebrity than the art in perfection; he who first played the fiddle was looked upon as a demigod.

The policy of man consists, at first, in endeavoring to arrive at a state equal to that of animals, whom nature has furnished with food, clothing, and shelter.

Men, generally going with the stream, seldom judge for themselves, and purity of taste is almost as rare as talent.

Where some states possess an army, the Prussian Army possesses a state.

It is reported in the supplement of the council of Nicæan that the fathers, being very perplexed to know which were the cryphal or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testaments, put them all pell-mell on an altar, and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It is a pity that this eloquent procedure has not survived.