if anyone present wishes to make me the subject of his wit, I am very much at his service--with my sword--whenever he has leisure.

We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

Many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and... God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again

Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first & we lose both first and second things.

When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.

Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.

But as long as you know you're nobody special, you'll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole, and taking one thing with another.