The highest point to which a weak but experienced mind can rise is detecting the weakness of better men.

One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.

Never undertake anything unless you have the heart to ask Heaven's blessing on your undertaking.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

Men still have to be governed by deception.

The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.

It is a great shame; most of our words are misused tools / which often still smell of the mud in which previous owners / desecrated them.