Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not.

In one and the same fire, clay grows hard and wax melts.

Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, is limited in act and understanding by his observation of the order of nature; neither his understanding nor his power extends further.

States, as great engines, move slowly.

We must see whether the same clock with weights will go faster at the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine; it is probable, if the pull of the weights decreases on the mountain and increases in the mine, that the earth has real attraction.

The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds.