A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.

The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.

Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.

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.

Man is a masterpiece of creation, if only because no amount of determinism can prevent him from believing that he acts as a free being.

We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms.

I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.