Besides, it happens (how, I cannot tell) that an idea launched like a javelin in proverbial form strikes with sharper point on the hearer's mind and leaves implanted barbs for meditation.

Everyone knows that by far the happiest and universally enjoyable age of man is the first. What is there about babies which makes us hug and kiss and fondle them, so that even an enemy would give them help at that age?

Young bodies are like tender plants, which grow and become hardened to whatever shape you've trained them.

The opinion formulated by the Church has more value in my eyes than human reasons, whatever they may be.

It is a greater advantage to be honestly educated than honorably born.

I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults.

You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay; it is the height of madness to learn what you will later have to unlearn.