The "second sight" possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don't wear trousers.

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 right to happiness is fundamental; men live so little time and die alone.

If our deepest desires cannot be satisfied in this world, then we must have been made for another world.

Action is stronger than subjectivity. No matter what you feel or think, you can still act.

I've always written. I'm from an older generation of programmers [who] did not come out of engineering. [A]ll sorts of people were drawn in from the social sciences and humanities.

The instruction of the foolish is a waste of knowledge; soap cannot wash charcoal white.

In the area of macroeconomic policies, I think we'll see more centralization, like in the budgetary sphere.

You are the author of your own life...Don't let others define it for you. Real power comes by doing what you are meant to be doing, and doing it well.

Today expect something good to happen to you no matter what occurred yesterday.

And while it is hard enough to take away something that makes a person happy it's even more difficult when it seems like it's the only thing.

Killing a person with a 8 cm ling blunt knife is a bloody affair.