As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

That what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit of his character.

In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, — seven or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.

Whatever limits us we call Fate.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.