Life without pain has no meaning.

Reading is a mere makeshift for original thinking.

Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

That I could clamber to the frozen moon. And draw the ladder after me.

The ordinary method of education is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense of the word, prejudices, on the mind of the child, before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be.

All religions promise a reward beyond life, in eternity, for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.

We seldom speak of what we have but often of what we lack.