No wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

Now there cannot be first principles for men, unless the Divinity has revealed them; all the rest--beginning, middle, and end--isnothing but dreams and smoke.

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.

There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.

The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear, and with good reason; that passion alone, in the trouble of it, exceeding all other accidents