“Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom.”

I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant.

It’s easier to be original and foolish than original and wise.

If you have a clear idea of a soul, you will have a clear idea of a form; for it is of the same genus, though a different species.

There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact.

..This is why the ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God.

Take what you need, do what you should, you will get what you want.

To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.

The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypotheses, is like the art of deciphering, in which an ingenious conjecture often greatly shortens the road.

There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.

The past is pregnant with the present.

Everything that is possible demands to exist.

I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something purely relative, as time; an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions.

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 to be recorded.

The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need.

Each portion of matter may be conceived of as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of the plant, each member of the animal, each drop of its humors, is also such a garden or such a pond.

I am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author.

Don’t succumb to excuses. Go back to the job of making the corrections and forming the habits that will make your goal possible.

In the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.

One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat.

I read an hour almost every night. It’s part of falling asleep.

The nation which indulges toward another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.

Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.