When a man of genius appears in the world, it is immediately recognized by the fact that all the blockheads join forces against him.

I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.

It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.

Vision is seeing the invisible.

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.