Maxims and Reflections

No one, I think, can perceive their worth without also discerning how nearly they touch the needs of our own day, and how greatly they may help us in facing certain problems of life and conduct, some of them, in truth, as old as the world itself, which appear to us now with peculiar force and subtlety.

There may be eclectic philosophers, but not an eclectic philosophy.

A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for the sake of them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.

a revolution is ultimately never the fault of the people, but of the injustice and incapacity of the government; and that where there is a real necessity for a great reform, the old leaven must be rooted out.

With those who are really of like disposition with himself a man cannot long be at variance; he will always come to an agreement again. With those who are really of adverse disposition, he may in vain try to preserve harmony; he will always come to a separation again.

What a true saying it is that he who wants to deceive mankind must before all things make absurdity plausible.

An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, a wise man hardly anything.

In contemplation as in action, we must distinguish between what may be attained and what is unattainable. Without this, little can be achieved, either in life or in knowledge.

If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.