“Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”

“Good manners is the art of making people comfortable. Whoever makes the fewest people uncomfortable has the best manners.”

“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”

“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”

“We have chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.”

“And I remember in frequent discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood, in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying and false representation… For he argued thus; that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated… …he leaves me worse than in ignorance, for I am led to believe a thing black when it is white, and short when it is long.”

“I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells; a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there; and often, when there is nothing in the world at the bottom, besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and half under ground, it shall pass however for wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrous dark.”