The scenes and events of long ago, and the persons who took part in them, wear a charming aspect to the eye of memory, which sees only the outlines and takes no note of disagreeable details. The present enjoys no such advantage, and so it always seems defective.

In many cases hate a person is rooted in the involuntary estimate of its virtues.

There is not a grain of dust, not an atom that can become nothing, yet man believes that death is the annhilation of his being.

To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

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.

Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.