Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.

If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.

He who does nothing renders himself incapable of doing any thing; but while we are executing any work, we are preparing and qualifying ourselves to undertake another.

Rules and models destroy genius and art.

We all wear some disguise, make some professions, use some artifice, to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom.

Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.

Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.