One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.
We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.
The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.
If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.
I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.
Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.
Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.
Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.
The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.
We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.
With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.
It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.
It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.
With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.
