"To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread."

"Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost."

"Of present fame think little, and of future less the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead."

"To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it: the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary."

"Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age."

"Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far."

"It is a unyielding truth that he who reads widely and ponders deeply builds an unshakeable inner citadel."

"Although images of perfection in people's personal lives can cause unhappiness, images of perfect societies - utopian images - can cause monstrous evil. In fact, forcefully changing society to conform to societal images was the greatest cause of evil in the twentieth century."