History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.
There is graciousness and a kind of urbanity in beginning with men by esteem and confidence. It proves, at least, that we have long lived in good company with others and with our selves.
Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force.
Religion is the only metaphysic that the multitude can understand and adopt.
If authorities were well organized, there would not be an Unknown Warrior.
Taste has never been corrupted by simplicity.
If fortune wishes to make a man estimable, she gives him virtues; if she wishes to make him esteemed, she gives him success.
Xenophon wrote with a swan’s quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and Thucydides with a brazen stylus.
The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections.
The beautiful invariably possesses a visible and a hidden beauty; and it is certain that no style is so beautiful as that which presents to the attentive reader a half-hidden meaning.
A temperate style is alone classical.
Speech is but the incorporation of thought.
Man is born with the faculty of speech. Who gives it to him? He who gives the bird its song.
Every modulated sound is not a song, and every voice that executes a beautiful air does not sing. Singing should enchant. But to produce this effect there must be a quality of soul and voice which is by no means common even with great singers.
Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.
In the interchange of thought use no coin but gold and silver.
It may be said that it is with our thoughts as with our flowers. Those whose expression is simple carry their seed with them; those that are double by their richness and pomp charm the mind, but produce nothing.
Attention is like a narrow mouthed vessel; pour into it what you have to say cautiously, and, as it were, drop by drop.
Only just the right quantum of wit should be put into a book; in conversation a little excess is allowable.
The voice is a human sound which nothing inanimate can perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an insinuating property which writing lacks. It is not merely so much air, but air modulated and impregnated with life.