Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

I never met a man who thought his thinking was faulty.

Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and lithe, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes.

I honor most those to whom I show least honor; and where my soul moves with great alacrity, I forget the proper steps of ceremony.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: "I settle nothing. . . . I do not understand it. . . . Nothing seems true that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is . . . , which is to say, I suspend my judgment.

I consider it equal injustice to set our heart against natural pleasures and to set our heart too much on them. We should neither pursue them, nor flee them; we should accept them.