The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem

Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance

That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy

For all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad

In idleness there is a perpetual despair

Heroism is the divine relation which, in all times, unites a great man to other men

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope

History is the essence of innumerable biographies