The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

God never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make the message clear for them.

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Language is the archives of history.

Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.