Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

If you want to influence him at all, you must do more than merely talk to him ; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will.

It's silly to try to escape other people's faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.

When memory begins to decay, proper names are what go first ...[C]ommon qualities and names have contracted an infinitely greater number of associations ...than the names of most of the persons ...Their memory is better organized. ...'Organization' means numerous associations; and the more numerous the associations, the greater the number of paths of recall. For the same reason... words... which form the grammatical framework of all our speech, are the very last to decay.

The critique of the highest values hitherto does not simply refute them or declare them invalid. It is rather a matter of displaying their origins as impositions which must affirm precisely what ought to be negated by the values established.

Put an end once for all to this discussion of what a good man should be, and be one.

Understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.

All things in nature become identical with the phenomena they present when submitted to the practices of our laboratories, whose problems no less than their apparatus express in turn the problems and interests of society as it is. This view may be compared with that of a criminologist maintaining that trustworthy knowledge of a human being can be obtained only by the well-tested and streamlined examining methods applied to a suspect in the hands of the metropolitan police.

Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit.

There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatible with the greater, the lesser must give way.

Space, subjectively, is the coexistence of perceptions - perceiving two objects at once.

There is a science of Dynamics in man's fortunes and nature, as well as of Mechanics. There is a science which treats of, and practically addresses, the primary, unmodified forces and energies of man, the mysterious springs of Love, and Fear, and Wonder, of Enthusiasm, Poetry, Religion, all which have a truly vital and infinite character; as well as a science which practically addresses the finite, modified developments of these, when they take the shape of immediate "motives," as hope of reward, or as fear of punishment.

Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and worth, has told me that Robert, in his young days, in spite of their hardship, was usually the gayest of speech; a fellow of infinite frolic, laughter, sense and heart; far pleasanter to hear there, stript cutting peats in the bog, or such like, than he ever afterwards knew him. I can well believe it. This basis of mirth, a primal element of sunshine and joyfulness, coupled with his other deep and earnest qualities, is one of the most attractive characteristics of Burns. A large fund of Hope dwells in him; spite of his tragical history, he is not a mourning man. He shakes his sorrows gallantly aside; bounds forth victorious over them.

A gifted humanity can only produce skeptics, never saints.

Ministers become a sort of miniature kings in their turn. Though they have the greatest opportunity of observing the impotence and unmeaningness of the character, they envy it. It is their trade perpetually to extol the dignity and importance of the master they serve; and men cannot long anxiously endeavor to convince others of the truth of any proposition without becoming half convinced themselves.

So monstrous is the making and keeping them slaves at all, abstracted from the barbarous usage they suffer, and the many evils attending the practice; as selling husbands away from wives, children from parents, and from each other, in violation of sacred and natural ties; and opening the way for adulteries, incests, and many shocking consequences, for all of which the guilty Masters must answer to the final Judge.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

The artist reconstructs the world to his plan.

Considered as a whole, Hesse's achievement can hardly be matched in modern literature; it is the continually rising trajectory of an idea, the fundamentally religious idea of how to 'live more abundantly'. Hesse has little imagination in the sense that Shakespeare or Tolstoy can be said to have imagination, but his ideas have a vitality that more than makes up for it. Before all, he is a novelist who used the novel to explore the problem: What should we do with our lives? The man who is interested to know how he should live instead of merely taking life as it comes, is automatically an Outsider.

My father's education was altogether of the worst and most limited. I believe he was never more than three months at any school. What he learned there showed what he might have learned. A solid knowledge of arithmetic, a fine antique handwriting - these, with other limited practical etceteras, were all the things he ever heard mentioned as excellent. He had no room to strive for more.

Is it not better to use what is in thy power like a free man than to desire in a slavish and abject way what is not in thy power?

If your parent is just, revere him; if not, bear with him.

The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live. And often this living nobly means that you cannot live long.

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life-becoming a better person.

An atom blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.

What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven.

Scientists, animated by the purpose of proving they are purposeless, constitute an interesting subject for study.

All that time is lost which might be better employed.

An individual who finds that he enjoys seeing others in positions of lesser liberty understands that he has no claim whatever to this enjoyment.

Means at our disposal should be regarded as a bulwark against the many evils and misfortunes that can occur. We should not regard such wealth as a permission or even an obligation to procure for ourselves the pleasures of the world.

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

Life after all is made up of eating and sleeping, of meeting and saying good-by to friends, of reunions and farewell parties, of tears and laughter, of having a haircut once in two weeks, of watering a potted flower and watching one's neighbor fall off his roof.

In every rebellion is to be found the metaphysical demand for unity, the impossibility of capturing it, and the construction of a substitute universe.

Yes, I am in favor of censorship, but it has to be conducted by people like me. And that's the difficulty (laughs). I'm in favor of encouraging every possible form of self-restraint and parental control. And I certainly don't think that pornography should be protected under the American Constitution.

I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new Constitution by nine States. It is a good canvas, on which some strokes only want retouching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from north to south, which calls for a bill of rights.

Follow the seasons of Ha,Ride in the state carriage of Yau,Wear the ceremonial cap of Chan,Let the music be the Shiu with its pantomimes.

The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, ... underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself.

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.

He that defers his charity 'till he is dead, is (if a man weighs it rightly) rather liberal of another man's, than of his own.

The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.

I cannot help believing that Mucius was all the more lucky because he manipulated the flames as calmly as if he were holding out his hand to the manipulator. He had wiped out all his previous mistakes; he finished the war unarmed and maimed; and with that stump of a hand he conquered two kings.

Man is a reasoning animal.

You can tell the man who rings true from the man who rings false, not by his deeds alone, but also by his desires.

The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.

There is a kind of latent omniscience not only in every man but in every particle.

Since those who rule in the city do so because they own a lot, I suppose they're unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who've had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth, so that by making loans to them, secured by the young people's property, and then calling those loans in, they themselves become even richer and more honored.

Not content with real sufferings, the anxious man imposes imaginary ones on himself; he is a being for whom unreality exists, must exist; otherwise where would he obtain the ration of torment his nature demands?

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.

May we not say, perhaps, that the evil man is annihilated because he wished to be annihilated, or that he did not wish strongly enough to eternalize himself because he was evil? May we say that it is not believing in the other life which causes a man to be good, but rather that being good causes him believe in it? And what is being good and being evil? These states belong to the sphere of ethics, not of religion; or rather, does not the doing good though being evil pertain to ethics, and the being good [forgivable] though doing evil, to religion?