There is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction.

For usually people resist as long as they can to dismiss the fool they harbor in their bosom, they resist to confess a major mistake or to admit a truth that makes them despair.

Everything great and intelligent is in the minority

Let us seek to fathom those things that are fathomable and reserve those things which are unfathomable for reverence in quietude.

To appear at church every Sunday; to look down upon, and let himself be looked at for an hour by the congregation, is the best means of becoming popular which can be recommended to a young sovereign.

In politics as on a sickbed men toss from side to side in hope of lying more comfortably.

He who is wise puts aside all claims which may dissipate his attention, and confining himself to one branch excels in that.