Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.

To the size of the state there is a limit, as there is to plants, animals and implements, for none of these retain their facility when they are too large.

With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible.

How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms

...The entire preoccupation of the physicist is with things that contain within themselves a principle of movement and rest.

The two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection are that a thing is your own and that it is your only one.

Anything whose presence or absence makes no discernible difference is no essential part of the whole.