One man may have some special knowledge at first-hand about the character of a river or a spring, who otherwise knows only what everyone else knows. Yet to give currency to this shred of information, he will undertake to write on the whole science of physics. From this fault many great troubles spring.

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

My opinion is that we must lend ourselves to others and give ourselves only to ourselves. If my will happened to be prone to mortgage and attach itself, I would not last: I am too tender, both by nature and by practice.

The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.

In general I ask for books that make use of learning, not those that build it up.

If faces were not alike, we could not distinguish men from beasts; if they were not different, we could not tell one man from another.

The reverse side of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and no defined limits.