To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.

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.

He didn't even attempt to smile and I knew then that I had lost him.

In middle school, I really didn't have music, but in high school, I remember taking a lot of choir and drama.

For me, I don't like it when there is too much interference in our lives. We're not children. It is our own life in our hands.

Observe a method in the distribution of your time. Every hour will then know its proper employment, and no time will be lost

Those who think that they have arrived, have lost their way. Those who think they have reached their goal, have missed it. Those who think they are saints, are demons.

Easy for you to say. You’re the one who got plowed. I was doing the plowing.

When I was a kid, my parents had a 900-pound television on top of a TV tray. My dad's theory was, 'Let him pull it over his head a few times, he'll learn.'

We should all be eating fruits and vegetables as if our lives depend on it - because they do.

It's a very bad thing when people exterminate other people, and people persecute minorities.

Recreational shopping is the shortest distance between two points: you and broke.