A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision, than the wisest individual.

A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation.

Men who know the same things are not long the best company for each other.

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.

But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter.Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.