Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.
Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.
One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation.
We are rarely proud when we are alone.
It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge that begins with experience.
The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.
We have the best government that money can buy.
Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.
Every dictator is an enemy of freedom, an opponent of law.
Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.
Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men.
Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.
Courage is knowing what not to fear.
In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom - along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.
Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time as come.
Tell the truth and shame the devil.
For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
To be at ease is better than to be at business. Nothing really belongs to us but time, which even he has who has nothing else.
Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.
The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.
All art is quite useless.
A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.
That which is so universal as death must be a benefit.
I'm a romantic a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't.
Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?
The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.
In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.
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