 For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity. |
| We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible. |
| Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions. |
| The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk. |
| To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say. |
| Only the dead have seen the end of the war. |
| I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads. |
| Sanity is madness put to good use. |
| There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. |
| The Soul is the voice of the body's interests. |
| Music is essentially useless, as is life. |
| The family is one of nature's masterpieces. |
| The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation. |
| Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings, without attaching them to events or objects in the world. |
| Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness. |
| Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men. |
| The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it. |
| Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. |
| To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography. |
| Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace. |
