People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws.

Everyone is perfectly willing to learn from unpleasant experience - if only the damage of the first lesson could be repaired.

There is a great difference between believing in something and believing in it again.

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

I have often noticed that when people come to understand a mathematical proposition in some other way than that of the ordinary demonstration, they promptly say, "Oh, I see. That's how it must be." This is a sign that they explain it to themselves from within their own system.

He marvelled at the fact that the cats had two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes were.

To see every day how people get the name 'genius' just as the wood-lice in the cellar the name 'millipede'-not because they have that many feet, but because most people don't want to count to 14-this has had the result that I don't believe anyone any more without checking.