One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

We have to believe that everything has a cause, as the spider spins its web in order to catch flies. But it does this before it knows there are such things as flies.

The wisdom of providence is as much revealed in the rarity of genius, as in the circumstance that not everyone is deaf or blind.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about.

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.

A donkey appears to me like a horse translated into Dutch.