Galileo called doubt the father of invention; it is certainly the pioneer.

There are some kinds of men who cannot pass their time alone; they are the flails of occupied people.(Bonald, M.} There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.

Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

There are ceremonious bows that repel one like a cudgel.

Constant companionship is not enjoyable, any more than constant eating. We sit too long at the table of friendship, when we outsit our appetites for each other's thoughts.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime