A philosopher will not believe what he sees because he is too busy speculating about what he does not see.

The Art of Flying is but newly invented, twill improve by degrees, and in time grow perfect; then we may fly as far as the Moon.

A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.

I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener.

To despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretension to do without knowing what one does, and to speak without knowing what one says.

It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.

People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them.