Meanings receive their dignity from words instead of giving it to them.

All men have happiness as their object: there is no exception. However different the means they employ, they all aim at the same end.

The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pully is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel.

What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.

We have an idea of truth, invincible to all scepticism.

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.