The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.

It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader.

That's always the way with fanatics; they cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple.

How many ideas have there been in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared?

I am a sick man...I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, i don't know a fig about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me. I am not being treated and never have been, though I respect medicine. What's more, I am also superstitious in the extreme; well, at least enough to respect medicine.

One's own free and unfettered volition, one's own caprice, however wild, one's own fancy, inflamed sometimes to the point of madness - that is the one best and greatest good, which is never taken into consideration because it cannot fit into any classification and the omission of which sends all systems and theories to the devil.

In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.