First the truth is ridiculed. Then it meets outrage. Then it is said to have been obvious all along.

I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Whatever torch we kindle, and whatever space it may illuminate, our horizon will always remain encircled by the depth of night.

If anyone spends almost the whole day in reading...he gradually loses the capacity for thinking...This is the case with many learned persons; they have read themselves stupid

The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real project.

Just as a stream flows smoothly on as long as it encounters no obstruction, so the nature of man and animal is such that we never really notice or become conscious of what is agreeable to our will; if we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted, has to have experienced a shock of some kind.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law.