We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves; fear, desire, hope, still push us on toward the future.

Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

No doctor takes pleasure in the health even of his friends.

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

It is probable that the principal credit of miracles, visions, enchantments, and such extraordinary occurrences comes from the power of imagination, acting principally upon the minds of the common people, which are softer.

Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity.