It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with a conceit of our own importance, which would render us insupportable through life. Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it.

One saves oneself much pain, by taking pains; much trouble, by taking trouble.

A lawyer's brief will be brief, before a freethinker thinks freely.

Mythology is not religion. It may rather be regarded as the ancient substitute, the poetical counterpart, for dogmatic theology.

Every wise man lives in an observatory.

When we skim along the surface of history we see little but the rough barren rocks that rise out of it.

A youth's love is the more passionate; virgin love is the more idolatrous.