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.

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

I leaf through books, I do not study them. What I retain of them is something I no longer recognize as anyone else's.

The worth of the mind consisteth not in going high, but in marching orderly.

He was doubtless an understanding Fellow that said, there was no happy Marriage but betwixt a blind Wife and a deaf Husband.

Every movement reveals us.

I give my opinion not as being good, but as being my own.