"The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts."
"Beware how you take away hope from another human being"
"Science is the topography of ignorance."
"Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor."
"Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad."
"The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,'The medicines of the soul."