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

I love a gay and sociable wisdom, and shun harshness and austerity in behaviour, holding every surly countenance suspect.

On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.

We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.

Habituation puts to sleep the eye of our judgment.

We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.