“I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong.”

“Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such. ”

“An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.”

“Union may be strength, but it is mere brute strength unless wisely directed.”

“A credulous mind . . . finds most delight in believingstrange things, and the stranger they are the easier they passwith him; but never regards those that are plain andfeasible, for every man can believe such.”

“Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.”

“I said to him one day that the very slender reward which God had attached to the pursuit of serious inquiry was a sufficient proof that He disapproved of it, or at any rate that he did not set much store by it nor wish to encourage it.”