But the touch or company of any man whatsoever stirreth up their heat, which in their solitude was hushed and quiet, and lay as cinders raked up in ashes.

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

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.

Eloquence is an engine invented to manage and wield at will the fierce democracy, and, like medicine to the sick, is only employed in the paroxysms of a disordered state.

He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.

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

The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.