Nothing Is So Firmly Believed As What

If I Am To Serve As An Instrument Of Deceit, At Least Let It Be With A Clear Conscience. I Do Not Want To Be Considered Either So Affectionate Or So Loyal A Servant As To Be Found Fit To Betray Anyone.

As For Our Pupils Talk, Let His Virtue And His Sense Of Right And Wrong Shine Through It And Have No Guide But Reason. Make Him Understand That Confessing An Error Which He Discovers In His Own Argument Even When He Alone Has Noticed It Is An Act Of Justice And Integrity, Which Are The Main Qualities He Pursues; Stubbornness And Rancour Are Vulgar Qualities, Visible In Common Souls Whereas To Think Again, To Change One's Mind And To Give Up A Bad Case On The Heat Of The Argument Are Rare Qualities Showing Strength And Wisdom.

It Is A Dangerous And Fateful Presumption, Besides The Absurd Temerity That It Implies, To Disdain What We Do Not Comprehend. For After You Have Established, According To Your Fine Undertstanding, The Limits Of Truth And Falsehood, And It Turns Out That You Must Necessarily Believe Things Even Stranger Than Those You Deny, You Are Obliged From Then On To Abandon These Limits.

Men Throw Themselves On Foreign Assistances To Spare Their Own, Which, After All, Are The Only Certain And Sufficient Ones.

I Have Never Observed Other Effects Of Whipping Than To Render Boys More Cowardly, Or More Willfully Obstinate.