No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself.

Though love and hatred are as opposites as fire and water, yet do they sometimes subsist in the breast together towards the same person; nay by their very opposition and desire to destroy each other, are they strengthened and increased.

The mind's eye is perhaps no better fitted for the full radiance of truth, than is the body's for that of the sun.

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens.

If the human mind naturally produces noisome weeds, it also produces flowers and fruit; and ... the best method to mend the soil in general, is for each of us to cultivate his own particular spot.

It by no means follows, that because two men utter the same words, they have precisely the same idea which they mean to express: language is inadequate to the variety of ideas which are conceived by different minds, and which, could they be expressed, would produce a new variety of characteristic differences between man and man.

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?