A man has virtues enough if he deserves pardon for his faults on account of them.

The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.

To write brashly about some things, it is almost necessary not to know much about them.

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.

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.