Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, which is to be what one is and no other.

No truth is proved, no truth achieved, by argument, and the ready-made truths men offer you are mere conveniences or drugs to make you sleep.

If it is true that wars are won by believers, it is also true that peace treaties are sometimes signed by businessmen.

When one wishes to play the wit, he sometimes wander a little from the truth.

The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.

Mad is the man who is forever gritting his teeth against that granite block, complete and changeless, of the past.

And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh!' And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you.