To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false.

Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.

Let man then contemplate nature in full and lofty majesty, and turn his eyes away from the mean objects which surround him. Let him look at the dazzling light hung aloft as an eternal lamp to lighten the universe; let him behold the earth, a mere dot compared with the vast circuit which that orb describes, and stand amazed to find that the vast circuit itself is but a very fine point compared with the orbit traced by the starts as they roll their course on high.

The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.

Vanity is illustrated in the cause and effect of love, as in the case of Cleopatra.