Begin and proceed on a settled conviction that but little is permitted to any man to do or to know, and if he complies with the first grand laws, he shall do well.

I believe it is the conviction of the purest men, that the net amount of man and man does not much vary. Each is incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty. His want of skill in other directions, has added to his fitness for his own work.

Every person has his or her own vocation-talent is the call.

A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.

Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena.

Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

An orator or author is never successful till he has learned to make his words smaller than his ideas.