“Seeming wise men may make shift to get opinion; but let no man choose them for employment; for certainly you were better take for business, a man somewhat absurd, than over-formal.”

“Some men are much better and wiser than others, but experience seems to show that hardly any man is so much better than or wiser than others that he can permanently stand the test of irresponsible power over them.”

“The wise man dies no better or more wisely than the fool. In what way, then, is the wise man wise?”

“The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.”

“If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.”

“Live as on a mountain. …Let men see, let them know a real man who lives according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live thus.”

“2168. 'Tis better for thee to be wise and not seem so, than to seem wise and not be so: Yet Men, for the most Part, desire and endeavor the contrary.”

“It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.”

“5272. Travel makes a wise Man better, but a Fool worse.”

“It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion, as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity.”