The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?

Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Too much is unwholesome.

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

Perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in company affords wisdom and apparent intelligence to a stupid person.