Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.

The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.

To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.

He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.

There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books and papers in order--that is, according to their notions of the matter--and hide things lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor anybody else can find them. This is a sort of magpie faculty. If anything is left where you want it, it is called litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery, as well as in the gravest concerns. Abraham Tucker complained that whenever his maid servant had been in his library, he could not see comfortably to work again for several days.

When you find out a man's ruling passion, beware of crossing him in it.

There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.