There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.

Pride dwells in the thought; the tongue can have but a very little share in it.

Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul.

There is a certain consideration, and a general duty of humanity, that binds us not only to the animals, which have life and feeling, but even to the trees and plants. We owe justice to people, and kindness and benevolence to all other creatures who may be susceptible of it. There is some intercourse between them and us, and some mutual obligation.

But as Nature is the best guide, teaching must be the development of natural inclinations, for which purpose the teacher must watch his pupil and listen to him, not continually bawl words into his ears as if pouring water into a funnel. Good teaching will come from a mind well made rather than well filled.

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.

I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray... I am myself the matter of my book.