The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.

Reason teaches us that what is good is good for something, and that what is good for nothing is not good at all.

His mind is so open - so open that ideas simply pass through it.

The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is even condemned to find much of his own mind.

The propriety of some persons seems to consist in having improper thoughts about their neighbors.

My external sensations are no less private to my self than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside... the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.

We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.