Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Pride is generally censured and decried, but mainly by those who have nothing to be proud of.

Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts.

A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels against this, and feels that it cannot be true.

Our moral virtues benefit mainly other people; intellectual virtues, on the other hand, benefit primarily ourselves; therefore the former make us universally popular, the latter unpopular.

He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone.