It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple.

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.

Humans in this world live based on two things: one is on the basis of the Self and the other is on the basis of the egoism.

Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.

So often when Black men have to play roles on TV, we're either the noble savage or we're completely a savage, and there's no nuance.

Every spirit makes its house, but as afterwards the house confines the spirit, you had better build well.

We do not make changes for the sake of making them, but we never fail to make a change when once it is demonstrated that the new way is better than the old way.

You had life by the tail and didn't know it.

If Gandhism means simply mechanically turning the spinning wheel, it deserves to be destroyed.

Physicians, when the cause of disease is discovered, consider that the cure is discovered.

It isn't the head but the stomach that determines the fate of the stockpicker.

I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.