Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.

Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further.

...nothing at all rides on the life or death of the individual.

Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine.

Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.