By improving yourself, the world is made better. Be not afraid of growing too slowly. Be afraid only of standing still.

I say it is impossible that so sensible a people [citizens of Paris], under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing.

Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.

He that doth what he should not, shall feel what he would not.

Neglect mending a small fault and 'twill soon be a great one.

Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have either one.

Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of the soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities.