“Accustom yourself to master and overcome things of difficulty; for if you observe, the left hand for want of practice is insignificant, and not adapted to general business; yet it holds the bridle better than the right, from constant use.”

In time of sickness the soul collects itself anew.

But with man, — by Hercules! most of his misfortunes are occasioned by man.

Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvelous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time? How many things, too, are looked up on as quite impossible until they have been actually effected?

Many dishes bring many diseases.

Chance is a second master.

The brain is the citadel of sense perception.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand; and through the lust of human wit obscure things are more easily credited.

Human nature craves novelty.

Hope is a working-man’s dream.

Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she abandon to cries and lamentations.

Nature is to be found in her entirety nowhere more than in her smallest creatures.

Nothing which we can imagine about Nature is incredible.

It is generally much more shameful to lose a good reputation than never to have acquired it.

Why is it that we entertain the belief that for every purpose odd numbers are the most effectual?

Let honor be to us as strong an obligation as necessity is to others.

When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it.

Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved.

To bribe a farmer not to plant 38 acres with corn … seven weeks of salary for a Customs man assigned to save us from the terror of high-quality, low priced foreign TV sets, or the subsidy on 6,000 bushels of wheat to prop up the Soviet regime.

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.

The National Targeting Center in Virginia run by Customs and Border Protection checks the background of every traveler who seeks to enter the country.

The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.

Whatever may be the laws and customs of a country, women always give the tone to morals.

The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.