A rogue is a roundabout fool.

Fear gives sudden instincts of skill.

The annals of the French Revolution prove that the knowledge of the few cannot counteract the ignorance of the many.... The light of philosophy, when it is confined to a small minority, points out the possessors as the victims rather than the illuminators of the multitude.

Chance is but the pseudonym of God for those particular cases, which he does not choose to acknowledge openly with his own sign manual.

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if,when you awoke,you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?

An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol.

I attended [Sir Humphry] Davy's lectures to renew my stock of metaphors.