“It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living.”

Women that are the least bashful are often the most modest.

Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.

The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.

A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which was intended for her preservation.

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them.

To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God.

A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.

We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree.

Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.

Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret.

Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.

War is a game in which princes seldom win, the people never.

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.

A power above all human responsibility ought to be above all human attainment.

It’s difficult for me to feel that a solid page without the breakups of paragraphs can be interesting. I break mine up perhaps sooner than I should in terms of the usage of the English language.

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.

Poetry is one of the destinies of speech… One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.

Without a knowledge of languages you feel as if you don’t have a passport.

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language.

The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs.

This country collects too many tongues, until our only language is silence.

The most beautiful words in the English language are ‘not guilty’.