“Virtue? A fig! 'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.”
“It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay. ”
“Thus we use our supposed "knowledge" of others to speak on their behalf, and condemn them for their words we ourselves put in their silent mouths.”
“If we commit ourselves to reading thus increasing our knowledge, only God limits how far we can go in this world.”
“The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.”
“Thus we can see that – at least at the level of economics – democracy is a sort of slow-motion suicide, in which you are told that it is the highest civic virtue to approve of thosewho want to rob you.”