"I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet…"

"The words 'Here you can find perfect peace' can be written only over the gates of a cemetery."

"The true method of advancing the sciences is to first lay solid foundations."

"If geometry were as much opposed to our passions and present interests as is ethics, we should contest it and violate it but little less, notwithstanding all the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimede…"

"The actual world is the most beautiful, because it contains the greatest variety with the greatest order."