What you have been obliged to discover by yourself leaves a path in your mind which you can use again when the need arises.

To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.

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

Perhaps pure reason without heart would never have thought of God.

Many intelligent people, when about to write . . . , force on their minds a certain notion about style, just as they screw up their faces when they sit for their portraits.

Some people read only because they are too lazy to think.

It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.