“Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid
“An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people- it takes away the heat and fever; and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the burden of the mystery
“The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing , to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts, not a select party
“What occasions the greater part of the world's quarrels? Simply this: Two minds meet and do not understand each other in time enough to prevent any shock of surprise at the conduct of either party
“The people only understand what they can feel; the only orators that can affect them are those who move them
“No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam
“One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them