Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors.

Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.

It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.

Many a truth is told in jest.

They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

The sciences are found, like Hercules's oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.