"We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power."

"A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation."

"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."

"It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true."

"It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this."

"The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection."

"Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feeling of moral superiority while asking nothing in return."

"The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others."

"Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them."

"An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable."

"There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it."

"Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and life."