The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

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.

Whatever torch we kindle, and whatever space it may illuminate, our horizon will always remain encircled by the depth of night.

There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted.

Animals learn death first at the moment of death;...man approaches death with the knowledge it is closer every hour, and this creates a feeling of uncertainty over his life, even for him who forgets in the business of life that annihilation is awaiting him. It is for this reason chiefly that we have philosophy and religion.

Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read directly in the book of the world.