There are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence.

In discussing these exceptions from the course of nature, the first question is, whether the fact be justly stated. That which is strange is delightful, and a pleasing error is not willingly detected.

Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him.

You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.

No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.

I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery.