“There is in every human countenance either a history or a prophecy which must sadden, or at least soften every reflecting observer.”

Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.

A single thought is that which it is from other thoughts as a wave of the sea takes its form and shape from the waves which precede and follow it.

What comes from the heart goes to the heart

Even to admire otherwise than on the whole and where “I admire” is but a synonyme for “I remember, I liked it very much when I was reading it ,” is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion!

A woman’s friendship borders more closely on love than man’s. Men affect each other in the reflection of noble or friendly acts; whilst women ask fewer proofs and more signs and expressions of attachment.

Man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action.

All powerful souls have kindred with each other

If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?.

No man does anything from a single motive.

Nothing can permanently please, which doesn’t contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise.

Within today, tomorrow is already walking.

He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses , each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively appropriate the name of Imagination.

The true key to the declension of the Roman empire which is not to be found in all Gibbon ‘s immense work may be stated in two words: the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.

A man’s as old as he’s feeling. A woman as old as she looks.

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live.

The rules of prudence, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. “Thou shalt not” is their characteristic formula.

Out of clothes out of countenance, out of countenance out of wit.