“...but since He gave it them for their benefit and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw form it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivate...”

“We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.”

“For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other m...”

“To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.”

“So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrat...”

“What worries you, masters you.”

“I see your point. It irks you to see anyone at all who is able to work permitted to live without working. But why do you consider work a virtue?”

“Those who have wisdom have all:Fools with all have nothing.”

“May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity - a virtuous woman.”

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”