Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.

It is not uncommon to charge the difference between promise and performance, between profession and reality, upon deep design and studied deceit; but the truth is, that there is very little hypocrisy in the world.

If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still

To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison; but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.

Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.

Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last

I have all my life long been lying in bed till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.