Whether we are in a pleasant or a painful state depends, finally, upon the kind of matter that pervades and engrosses our consciousness and what we compare it to - better and we envious and sad, worse and we feel grateful and happy.

Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.

To forgive and forget means to throw away dearly bought experience.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

First the truth is ridiculed. Then it meets outrage. Then it is said to have been obvious all along.

Although as a rule the absurd culminates, and it seems impossible for the voice of the individual ever to penetrate through the chorus of foolers and fooled, still there is left to the genuine works of all times a quite peculiar, silent, slow, and powerful influence; and as if by a miracle, we see them rise at last out of the turmoil like a balloon that floats up out of the thick atmosphere of this globe into purer regions. Having once arrived there, it remains at rest, and no one can any longer draw it down again.

Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge.