The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.

To be content with life or to live merrily, rather all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.

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.

What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears...as easily as we open and shut our eyes.

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.