“To make clever people believe we are what we are not is in most instances harder than really to become what we want to seem to be.”

“The excuses we make to ourselves when we want to do something are excellent material for soliloquies, for they are rarely made except when we are alone, and are very often made aloud.”

“If we thought more for ourselves we would have very many more bad books and very many more good ones.”

“...if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.”

“I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.”

“To make a vow is a greater sin than to break one.”

“Some people come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede -- not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above 14.”