Oh, a friend! How true is that old saying, that the enjoyment of one is sweeter and more necessary than that of the elements of water and fire!

Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.

Let [children] be able to do all things, and love to do only the good.

I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.

Who so hath his mind on taking, hath it no more on what he taketh.

A man must become wise at his own expense.

I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.