A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites no interest in any. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.

The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room."

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end.

The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.

Tyrants forego all respect for humanity in proportion as they are sunk beneath it. Taught to believe themselves of a different species, they really become so, lose their participation with their kind, and in mimicking the god dwindle into the brute.

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.

To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.