I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.

The dispersing and scattering our names into many mouths, we call making them more great.

The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all; they will chew our meat for us.

To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

Reason has so many forms that we do not know which to choose-Experiment has no fewer.