Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.

Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.

Lucy, dear child, mind your arithmetic. You know in the first sum of yours I ever saw there was a mistake. You had carried two (as a cab is licensed to do), and you ought, dear Lucy, to have carried but one. Is this a trifle? What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors.

[T]he 47th proposition in Euclid might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics; and therefore if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science as much as he hates concrete truth in human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions of the hypotenuse.

How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is "I will see you in the vestry after service."

Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.

What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?