Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.

By retaliating our sufferings on the heads of those we love, we get rid of a present uneasiness and incur lasting remorse. With the accomplishment of our revenge our fondness returns; so that we feel the injury we have done them, even more than they do.

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.

The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.

No really great man ever thought himself so.

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.