No despotism is so formidable as that of a religion or a scientific system.

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.

You need feeling, emotion, to create. You can't create out of indifference.

Finally, if nothing can be truly asserted, even the following claim would be false, the claim that there is no true assertion.

The social pressure from friend and acquaintance to collude, to not notice racism, can be quite powerful.

Writing a novel proved to be the hardest, most self-analyzing task I had ever attempted, far worse than an autobiography: and its rewards were greater than I expected.

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.

Oh, to be a center fielder, a center fielder- and nothing more

People who love sausage and people who believe in justice should never watch either of them being made

It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.

You've come to know the fortunate and the inauspicious stars, but you don't know whether you yourself are fortunate or lucky.

And this manner of speaking of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.