"If to be great means to be good, then Denis Diderot was a little man. But if to be great means to do great things in the teeth of great obstacles, then none can refuse him a place in the temple of the Immortals."

“There is always more goodness in the world than there appears to be, because goodness is of its very nature modest and retiring.”

“In his home-life Turgot remained most frugal and laborious, treating his servants with a benevolence then accounted contemptible, and working out his quiet schemes with an infinite patience and thoroughness. When he was offered the richer Intendancy of Lyons, he would not take it. Here, as he said of himself, though he was 'the compulsory instrument of great evil,' he was doing a little good. Only a little, it might be. But if every man did the little he could — what a different world!”

“A Platonic friendship is perhaps only possible when one or other of the Platonists is in love with a third person.”

“He who has lost only those of whose faith and truth he is sure, has not yet reached the depth of human desolation.”

“Information on the origins of Hall's most famous statement”

“It is by character and not by intellect the world is won.”