I've always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

We know that the exercise of virtue should be its own reward, and it seems to follow that the enduring of it on the part of the patient should be its own punishment.

The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.

I suggest to young professors that their first work should be written in a jargon only to be understood by the erudite few. With that behind them, they can ever after say what they have to say in a language 'understand of the people.'