To conceal a want of real ideas, many make for themselves an imposing apparatus of long compound words, intricate flourishes and phrases, new and unheard-of expressions, all of which together furnish an extremely difficult jargon that sounds very learned. Yet with all this they say-precisely nothing.

There are three stages in the revelation of truth. The first is to be ridiculed, the second is to be resisted and the third is to be considered self-evident.

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets you fancy that on the horizon heaven and earth meet.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law.

The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.

Before you take anything away, you must have something better to put in its place.