I forget most of what I read, just as I do most of what I have eaten, but I know that both contribute no less to the conservation of my mind and my body on that account.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Why not?

Mom was the midwife who delivered stories to me.

Computers get better faster than anything else ever.

The best form of saying is doing.

A voice is in the wind I do not know A meaning on the face of the high hills Whose utterance I cannot comprehend. A something is behind them: that is God.

I wished I could be alone in my room, with my books, away from these people.

We ask the West to remove what they created sixty years ago [Israel] and if they do not listen to our recommendations, then the Palestinian nation and other nations will eventually do this for them.

Care draws on care, woe comforts woe again, Sorrow breeds sorrow, on grief brings forth twain.

We've got a lot of experience of not having any experience