As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.

Nothing puts a greater obstacle in the way of the progress of knowledge than thinking that one knows what one does not yet know.

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.