A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand.

Do not judge God's world from your own. Trim your own hedge as you wish and plant your flowers in the patterns you can understand, but do not judge the garden of nature from your little window box.

People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.

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.

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