Xenophon wrote with a swan's quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and Thucydides with a brazen stylus.
Speech is but the incorporation of thought.
There are people who are virtuous only in a piece-meal way; virtue is a fabric from which they never make themselves a whole garment.
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.
One man finds in religion his literature and his science, another finds in it his joy and his duty.
I love prudence very little, if it is not moral.
We disjoint the mind like the body.
Before using a fine word, make a place for it.
To the liberal ideas of the age must be opposed the moral ideas of all ages.
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet. [Fr., Celui qui a de l'imagination sans erudition a des ailes, et n'a pas de pieds.]
Antiquity! I like its ruins better than its reconstructions.
The soul that is the abode of chastity acquires an energy which enables her to surmount with ease the obstacles that lie along the path of duty.
Success serves men as a pedestal. It makes them seem greater when not measured by reflection.
The dregs may stir themselves as they please; they fall back to the bottom by their own coarseness.
Fate and necessity are unconquerable.
Maxims are to the intellect what laws are to actions; they do not enlighten, but they guide and direct, and, although themselves blind, are protective.
Think of the ills from which you are exempt.
The true character of epistolary style is playfulness and urbanity.
In the commerce of language use only coin of gold and silver.
God multiplies intelligence, which communicates itself, like fire, ad infinitum. Light a thousand torches at one touch, the flame remains always the same.
History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.
Let us be men with men, and always children before God; for in His eyes we are but children. Old age itself, in presence of eternity, is but the first moment of a morning.
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.
Strength is not energy; some authors have more muscles than talent.
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