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All the abuses in the world
“[A]ll the abuses in the world are engendered, by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance and our being bound to accept everything that we cannot refute.” III.2 Of cripples (p. 959)
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Speech belongs half to the speaker
“Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener. The latter must prepare to receive it according to the motion it takes. As among tennis players, the receiver moves and makes ready according to the motion of the striker and the nature of the stroke.” III.13 “Of experience” (p.1016)
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Opinions
“There is nothing on which men are commonly more intent than on making a way for their opinions.” Of Cripples. 957
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The most learned man alive
“At least I have one thing according to the rules: that no man ever treated a subject he knew and understood better than I do the subject I have undertaken; and that in this I am the most learned man alive. Secondly, that no man ever penetrated more deeply into his material, or plucked…
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Languid motion
“Stability itself is nothing but a more languid motion.” III.2 “Of repentance” (p.740)
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Bundle of disparate pieces
“This bundle of so many disparate pieces is being composed in this manner: I set my hand to it only when pressed by too unnerving an idleness, and nowhere but at home.” II.31 Of the resemblance of children to fathers (p.696)
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Honor in weeping for husbands
“If there is some honor in weeping for husbands, it belongs only to those who have smiled upon theirs; let those who have wept in his life smile in his death, outwardly as well as inwardly.” II.35 “Of three good women” (p. 683)
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What we call monsters
“What we call monsters are not so to God, who sees in the immensity of his work the infinity of forms that he has comprised in it…From his infinite wisdom there proceeds nothing but that is good and ordinary and regular…We call contrary to nature what happens contrary to custom; nothing is anything but according…
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We are nothing but ceremony
“We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.” II.17 “Of presumption” (581).
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The custom of fathers
“I loathe the custom of forbidding children to use the name of father and enjoining upon them some strange address, as being more respectful; as if nature had not already provided sufficiently for our authority.” II.8 (p. 345)