Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals.
In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.
He that gives good advice, builds with one hand he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.
Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
'Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
Love is too young to know what conscience is.
He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.
Forty is the old age of youth fifty the youth of old age.
History should be written as philosophy.
As I grew older, I realized that it was much better to insist on the genuine forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.
Let ignorance talk as it will, learning has its value.
We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.
The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society.
Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.
Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
Our religion is itself profoundly sad - a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man's own language - so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.
Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.
The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.
In this connection, faith and experience teach us many truths by means of the short-cut of authority and by the proofs of very pleasant and agreeable feelings.
Let each man exercise the art he knows.
Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.
Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.
Poetry is one of the destinies of speech... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.
In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
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