If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.

One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.

If nature be regarded as the teacher and we poor human beings as her pupils, the human race presents a very curious picture. We all sit together at a lecture and possess the necessary principles for understanding it, yet we always pay more attention to the chatter of our fellow students than to the lecturer's discourse. Or, if our neighbor copies something down, we sneak it from him, stealing what he himself may have heard imperfectly, and add it to our own errors of spelling and opinion.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

Non cogitant, ergo non sunt.

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.

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.