[Science is] the desire to know causes.

True modesty and true pride are much the same thing: both consist in setting a just value on ourselves - neither more nor less.

The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.

The seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.

Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Abuse is an indirect species of homage.