Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.

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

Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

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

An hour-glass is a reminder not only of time's quick flight, but also of the dust to which we must at last return

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.

One should never trust a person who, while assuring you of something, puts his hands on his heart.