Profane eloquence is transfered from the bar, where Le Maitre, Pucelle, and Fourcroy formerly practised it, and where it has become obsolete, to the Pulpit, where it is out of place.
Eloquence may be found in conversations and in all kinds of writings; it is rarely found when looked for, and sometimes discovered where it is least expected.
Eloquence is to the sublime what the whole is to the part.
The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble; but every decent man is concerned if an innocent person is condemned.
Born merely for the purpose of digestion.
The nearer we come to great men the more clearly we see that they are only men. They rarely seem great to their valets.
Rarely do they appear great before their valets.
When a man puts on a Character he is a stranger to, there’s as much difference between what he appears, and what he is really in himself, as there is between a VIzor and a Face.
The flatterer does not think highly enough of himself or of others.
The State not seldom tolerates a comparatively great evil to keep out millions of lesser ills and inconveniences which otherwise would be inevitable and without remedy.
A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.
There is as much trickery required to grow rich by a stupid book as there is folly in buying it.
A man has made great progress in cunning when he does not seem too clever to others.
There are certain people who so ardently and passionately desire a thing, that from dread of losing it they leave nothing undone to make them lose it.
Men fall from great fortune because of the same shortcomings that led to their rise.
There are few wives so perfect as not to give their husbands at least once a day good reason to repent of ever having married, or at least of envying those who are unmarried.
It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform to other men’s opinions than to bring them over to ours.
There are some extraordinary fathers, who seem, during the whole course of their lives, to be giving their children reasons for being consoled at their death.
Party loyalty lowers the greatest men to the petty level of the masses.
Piety with some people, but especially with women, is either a passion, or an infirmity of age, or a fashion which must be followed.