There's been terrible things we've seen, haven't there? And more likely to come, more than likely. So I think I'd rather not know what's in the future. I'll stick to the present.

But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word 'artificial.' Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many...

The boldest plans for the future invoke the authority of the past; and that even a revolutionary seeks to satisfy himself that he is also a reactionary.

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise...

... but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific...

Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.

Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid. - HEINRICH HEINE

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued. - Socrates

People are afraid to concentrate because they are afraid of losing themselves if they are too absorbed in another person, in an idea, in an event. The less strong their self, the greater the fear of...

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the...

There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

A single farm house which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape...

Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid.

I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for...

The choices we make within the boundaries of the twists of fate determines who we are

Religion is concerned not with genuine history, but with sacred history, which does not course through time like a river. Rather, sacred history is like a hallowed tree whose roots dig deep into...

At some time during the process, {of writing} I came up with a therapeutic device. After each draft I would tear up the pages and feed the paper to a worm compost I keep in my garage. A few months...

As Plato said, every soul is deprived of truth against its will. The same holds true for justice, self-control, goodwill to others, and every similar virtue. It's essential to constantly keep this in...

It takes a special kind of humility to grasp that you know less, even as you know and grasp more and more. It's remembering Socrates' wisdom lay in the fact that he knew that he knew next to nothing.

Everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject.

Uneducated people delight in argument and fault-finding, for it is easy to find fault, but difficult to recognize the good and its inner necessity.

Freedom was a word that everyone mentioned but none of us knew.

Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.

Ridicule was a better defense than truth.

Do we miss not only the past but every future the lost past describes? Is that just the nature of missing? All the lost might - have - beens? The certainty that those uncertain futures are gone?

Yeah, exactly. But, actually, boards prefer iron. All that glitters is not hovery.

More lies, but maybe lies were better than the truth.

Mindy had explained that a lot of things had ghosts, not just people. Animals, machines, even things as vast as a paved - over forest or as humble as the smell of good cooking could leave traces of...

We are only what we know.

Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that truly move the world are invisible.