One of our forefathers must have read a forbidden book.

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.

The things that I've been longing for were nothing but dreams.

He who says that someone isn’t himself is a victim of statistics.

You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.

People may like a person’s thought for its touching words, but they like him truly for his own deeds touching their heart.

The United States grants the favors of the second, third, or fifty-seventh chance, and its citizens remain free to invent for themselves whatever character draws a crowd or pays the rent.

To an old memory like mine the present days are but as a little water poured on the deep.

I was so brilliant in the past. Now my mind is a blank. It's so glorious to get old.

At the top of the cycle you write policies for everybody, no matter how bad, and at the bottom you cancel everybody, no matter how good. It's a manic-depressive cycle.

In religion, you obey because God is useful. In Christianity, you obey because God is beautiful.