The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

I would have every man write what he knows and no more.

When we see a man with bad shoes, we say it is no wonder, if he is a shoemaker.

The most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles.

Men do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest, and keeps incessantly whirling around, building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like silkworms, and is suffocated in it. A mouse in a pitch barrel...thinks it notices from a distance some sort of glimmer of imaginary light and truth; but while running toward it, it is crossed by so many difficulties and obstacles, and diverted by so many new quests, that it strays from the road, bewildered.

Opinion is a powerful party, bold, and without measure.

Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope.