 If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special. |
| The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority. |
| Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age. |
| A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments. |
| It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories. |
| When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so. |
| Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle. |
| 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. |
| Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates. |
| The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter. |
| It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists. |
| The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it. |
| To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject. |
| Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven. Topics: Courage |
| What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones? |
| The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle. |
| The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing. |
| 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. |
| I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better. |
| If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards. |
