Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life; not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.

Their pupils and their little charges are not nourished and fed by what they learn: the learning is passed from hand to hand with only one end in view: to show it off, to put into our accounts to entertain others with it, as though it were merely counters, useful for totting up and producing statements, but having no other use or currency. 'Apud alios loqui didicerunt, non ipsi secum' [They have learned how to talk with others, not with themselves]

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

A good marriage (if any there be) refuses the conditions of love and endeavors to present those of amity.

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.

We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.

Those sciences which govern the morals of mankind, such as Theology and Philosophy, make everything their concern: no activity is so private or so secret as to escape their attention or their jurisdiction.