When an idea is just rising on the horizon, the soul's temperature with respect to it is usually very cold. Only gradually does the idea develop its warmth, and it is hottest (which is to say, exerting its greatest influence) when belief in the idea is already once again in decline.

Pathetic attitudes are not in keeping with greatness.

The charm of the Platonic mode of thought ... consisted precisely in the resistance to the obvious evidence of the senses.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

Some die too young, some die too old; the precept sounds strange, but die at the right age.

Scholars who become politicians are usually assigned the comic role of having to be the good conscience of state policy.

The English are a nation of consummate cant.