The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason.

The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.

Happiness ... leads none of us by the same route.

Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.

Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.

It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.

Observation made in the cloister or in the desert will generally be as obscure as the one and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over-fearful of a little dust.