To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

Every man carries the entire form of human condition.

I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.

In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.

Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency: a man may very well say a good thing, give a good answer, cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one or the other.

So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation.