Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.
Man is condemned to be free.
We do not judge the people we love.
Life is a useless passion.
Nations and men are only the best when they are the gladdest, and deserve heaven when they enjoy it.
People will not bear it when advice is violently given, even if it is well founded. Hearts are flowers; they remain open to the softly falling dew, but shut up in the violent downpour of rain.
I have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.
Beauty attracts us men; but if, like an armed magnet it is pointed, beside, with gold and silver, it attracts with tenfold power.
The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity.
Jesus is the purest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the pure, who, with his pierced hand has raised empires from their foundations, turned the stream of history from its old channel, and still continues to rule and guide the ages.
Romanticism is beauty without bounds-the beautiful infinite.
In a major matter no details are small.
Great men help dazzle the people; after that, they dazzle themselves even more dangerously.
Timorous minds are much more inclined to deliberate than to resolve.
One of man’s greatest failings is that he looks almost always for an excuse, in the misfortune that befalls him through his own fault, before looking for a remedy-which means he often finds the remedy too late.
Weakness has many stages. There is a difference between feebleness by the impotency of the will, of the will to the resolution, of the resolution to the choice of means, of the choice of the means to the application.
Every man whom chance alone has, by some accident, made a public character, hardly ever fails of becoming, in a short time, a ridiculous private one.
When you are obliged to make a statement that you know will cause displeasure, you must say it with every appearance of sincerity; this is the only way to make it palatable.
It’s easier to fight one’s enemies than to get on with one’s friends.
Persecution to persons in a high rank stands them in the stead of eminent virtue.