For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave; in bed, beauty before goodness.

My opinion is that we must lend ourselves to others and give ourselves only to ourselves. If my will happened to be prone to mortgage and attach itself, I would not last: I am too tender, both by nature and by practice.

Learning is not to be tacked to the mind, but we must fuse and blend them together, not merely giving the mind a slight tincture, but a thorough and perfect dye. And if we perceive no evident change and improvement, it would be better to leave it alone; learning is a dangerous weapon, and apt to wound its master if it be wielded by a feeble hand, and by one not well acquainted with its use.

O human creature,you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce.

If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time; it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price.

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.

Who so hath his mind on taking, hath it no more on what he taketh.