God has no power over the past except to cover it with oblivion.

Compassion and shame come over one who considers how precarious is the origin of the proudest of living beings: often the smell of a lately extinguished lamp is enough to cause a miscarriage. And to think that from such a frail beginning a tyrant or butcher may be born! You who trust in your physical strength, who embrace the gifts of fortune and consider yourself not their ward but their son, you who have a domineering spirit, you who consider yourself a god as soon as success swells your breast, think how little could have destroyed you!

Our civilization depends largely on paper.

The most valuable discoveries have found their origin in the most trivial accidents.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand; and through the lust of human wit obscure things are more easily credited.

The feasant hens of Colchis, which have two ears as it were consisting of feathers, which they will set up and lay down as they list.

The perverted ingenuity of man has given to water the power of intoxicating where wine is not procured. Western nations intoxicate themselves by moistened grain.