The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the understanding.

The only thing permanent is change.

Animals... are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man.

But a lie is a lie, and in itself intrinsically evil, whether it be told with good or bad intents.

What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are perfecting of ourselves, the happiness of others.

One cannot avoid a certain feeling of disgust, when one observes the actions of man displayed on the great stage of the world. Wisdom is manifested by individuals here and there; but the web of human history as a whole appears to be woven from folly and childish vanity, often, too, from puerile wickedness and love of destruction: with the result that at the end one is puzzled to know what idea to form of our species which prides itself so much on its advantages.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.