“The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.”

“The most beautiful lives, to my mind,are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle, and without eccentricity.”

“When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing.”

“All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.”

“Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.”

“I care not so much what I am in the opinion of others, as what I am in my own.”

“In our time the most warlike nations are the most rude and ignorant.”