Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
Great affectation and great absence of it are at first sight very similar.
In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.
One way in which fools succeed where wise men fail is that through ignorance of the danger they sometimes go coolly about a hazardous business.
It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth.
The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind...
Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the best of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves.
Every instance of a man’s suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
A man will never change his mind if he have no mind to change.
It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is unobstructive: without the latter it is deceptive.
Party spirit enlists a man’s virtues in the cause of his vices.
The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
Concerning the utility of Rhetoric, it is to be observed that it divides itself into two; first, whether Oratorical skill be, on the whole, a public benefit, or evil; and secondly, whether any artificial system of Rules is conducive to the attainment of that skill.
No one complains of the rules of Grammar as fettering Language; because it is understood that correct use is not founded on Grammar, but Grammar on correct use. A just system of Logic or of Rhetoric is analogous, in this respect, to Grammar...
As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted; as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions.
As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
The love of admiration leads to fraud, much more than the love of commendation; but, on the other hand, the latter is much more likely to spoil our: good actions by the substitution of an inferior motive.
Persecution is not wrong because it is cruel; but it is cruel because it is wrong.
To teach one who has no curiosity to learn, is to sow a field without ploughing it.