I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer’s mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself.

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.

Mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of absurdity.

Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.

The man who sees two or three generations is like one who sits in the conjuror's booth at a fair, and sees the same tricks two or three times. They are meant to be seen only once.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.