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

Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

For whence did Dante take the materials for his hell but from this our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it.

Everything that happens, happens of necessity.

Women remain children all their lives, for they always see only what is near at hand, cling to the present, take the appearance of a thing for reality, and prefer trifling matters to the most important.

For our improvement we need a mirror.

We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves and those who think through others. The latter are the rule and the former the exception. The first are original thinkers in a double sense, and egotists in the noblest meaning of the word.