They took each other's advice, opened one book, went over to another, then did not know what to decide when opinions diverged so widely.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Most vegetarians look so much like the food they eat that they can be classified as cannibals.

I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.

Downstairs, Grandad's warning Barron about something. His voice swells, and I catch the words, "In my day we were feared. Now we're just afraid.

...you cannot punish a wet child for the rain.

By acting as you wish yourself to be, in due course you will become as you act.

I love The Purple Book. It continually helps reinforce the only foundation worth building upon— a biblical one.

As soon as a thought darts, I write it down.

There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.

Be as thankful for it all the time as you expect to be when it has taken form.

To my eye Rubens' colouring is most contemptible. His shadows are a filthy brown somewhat the colour of excrement.