Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

Exile is terrible to those who have, as it were, a circumscribed habitation; but not to those who look upon the whole globe but as one city.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

The following passage is one of those cited by Copernicus himself in his preface to De Revolutionibus: "The Syracusan Hicetas, as Theophrastus asserts, holds the view that the heaven, sun, moon, stars, and in short all of the things on high are stationary, and that nothing in the world is in motion except the earth, which by revolving and twisting round its axis with extreme velocity produces all the same results as would be produced if the earth were stationary and the heaven in motion. . . ."

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

The first law for the historian is that he shall never dare utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.