Cruelty is the highest pleasure to the cruel man; it is his love.

A true philosopher is beyond the reach of fortune.

Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration.

Belief in a future life is the appetite of reason.

The sublime is contained in a grain of dust.

There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the easy ones that lie within it.

Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much.