"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power - he's free again."
"The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."
"There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it."
"I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes."
"The bow cannot possibly always stand bent, nor can human nature or human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation."
"There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second."
"All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason."
"To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object."
"As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which he cannot apply will make no man wise."
"In every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part."
"I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake."
"Try not to become a person of success, rather try to become a person of value."
"What is an idea? It’s an image that paints itself in my brain. So all your ideas are images? Assuredly; for the most abstract ideas are the consequences of all the objects I’ve perceived."
"On the Nature of Mathematical Truth, in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics (1956) The first draft of anything is shit."
"To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not."
"Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."
"The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children."
"It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves."
"We are finite beings: there can be no infinite happiness for us. The soul that dreams it and pursues it will embrace but a shadow."
"Merchant (n): One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar."
"Age before beauty; and pearls before swine."
"He saw a lawyer killing a viper<BR>On a dunghill hard, by his own stable<BR>And the devil smiled, for it put him in mind<BR>Of Cain and his brother, Abel."
"They go forth with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds and undeveloped hearts. An undeveloped heart - not a cold one. The difference is important."
"No, Ernest, don't talk about actionÖ. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream."
"Every child walks into existence through the golden gate of love."
"Full nakedness!<BR>All joyes are due to thee,<BR>As souls unbodied,<BR>Bodies uncloth'd must be<BR>To taste whole joyes."
"It isn't that they can't see the solution. It's that they can't see the problem."
"I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow."
"The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education."
"Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep."
"To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime."
"No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he."
"Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated."
"Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises."
"A man who can love deeply is never utterly contemptible."
"Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny -- Did you ever try buying them without money?"
"What then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be an equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal, who had warned his victim"
"I can't forgive my friends for dying; I don't find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing."
"As a cousin of mine once said about money, money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to day about money."
"However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts."
"There can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for further desires."
"I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself."
"I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes."
"Jests that give pains are no jests."
"The rarest feeling that ever lights a human face is the contentment of a loving soul."
"We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect."
"Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she has laid an asteroid."
"The definition of courage is grace under fire."
"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
"The bow always strung ... will not do."