The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experience.

It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.

Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.

A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.

It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.