The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.

All of our miseries prove our greatness. They are the miseries of a dethroned monarch.

Unless we love the truth we cannot know it.

Man is so made that by continually telling him he is a fool he believes it, and by continually telling it to himself he makes himself believe it. For man holds an inward talk with himself, which it pays him to regulate.

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.

Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval.

All man's troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room.