People cannot go wrong, if you don't let them. They cannot go right, unless you let them.

In the moment of our creation we receive the stamp of our individuality; and much of life is spent in rubbing off or defacing the impression.

Most painters have painted themselves. So have most poets: not so palpably indeed, but more assiduously. Some have done nothing else.

They who boast of their tolerance merely give others leave to be as careless about religion as they are themselves. A walrus might as well pride itself on its endurance of cold.

Many men spend their lives in gazing at their own shadows, and so dwindle away into shadows thereof.

I like the smell of a dunged field, and the tumult of a popular election.

Philosophy cannot raise the commonalty up to her level: so, if she is to become popular, she must sink to theirs.