Books are a languid pleasure.

We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.

We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions; we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote.

We took advantage of [the Indians'] ignorance and inexperience to incline them the more easily toward treachery, lewdness, avarice, and every sort of inhumanity and cruelty, after the example and pattern of our ways.

A person is bound to lose when he talks about himself; if he belittles himself, he is believed; if he praises himself, he isn't believed.

He that is a friend to himself, know; he is a friend to all.

Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying its masters indigence, at its pleasure, with all things he can imagine or desire!