The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.

The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.

Oh devil! truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie.

Of the few innocent pleasures left to men past middle life, the jamming of common sense down the throats of fools is perhaps the keenest.

Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature.

A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.

I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything...