Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

How did mankind ever come by the idea of liberty? What a grand thought it was!

All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true.

There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.

It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.

The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.