Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish to go.

The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family.

I can readily conceive of a man without hands or feet; and I could conceive of him without a head, if experience had not taught me that by this he thinks, Thought then, is the essence of man, and without this we cannot conceive of him.

Knowledge has two extremes. The first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth. The other extreme is that reached by great minds, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back again to that same natural ignorance from which they set out; this is a learned ignorance which is conscious of itself.

The Fall is an offense to human reason, but once accepted, it makes perfect sense of the human condition.

Good deeds, when concealed, are the most admirable.

Continuous eloquence wearies.