A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.

Men are rather beholden ... generally to chance or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and sciences.

Some men covet knowledge out of a natural curiosity and inquisitive temper; some to entertain the mind with variety and delight; some for ornament and reputation; some for victory and contention; many for lucre and a livelihood; and but few for employing the Divine gift of reason to the use and benefit of mankind.

In things that are tender and unpleasing, it is good to break the ice by some one whose words are of less weight, and to reserve the more weighty voice to come in as by chance.

In civil business; what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness: and yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness.

An illustrational form tells you through the intelligence immediately what the form is about, whereas a non-illustrational form works first upon sensation and then slowly leaks back into the fact.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.