Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

It is a great shame; most of our words are misused tools / which often still smell of the mud in which previous owners / desecrated them.

If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

Ambition and suspicion always go together.

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.