If moderation is a fault then indifference is a crime.

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.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

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.

She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

One part braggart to one part coward. He would fear everyone he did not control. And the next day he would fear those he controlled even more.

Revolutionary behavior and violence are usually only indulged in when people are at their wits’ end. So social stability depends a lot on how long their wits are.

Yeah, I became a successful entrepreneur... Eventually

We're on the verge of all things new.

Vintage was brilliant!

All people interested in their work are liable to overrate their vocation. There may be makers of dolls' eyes who wonder how society would go on without them.

All the public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals.

And if we get caught, I will claim I made you go. At gunpoint. I am American. People will assume I'm armed.

What is needed is, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude.