People who have read a good deal rarely make great discoveries. I do not say this in excuse of laziness, but because invention presupposes an extensive independent contemplation of things.

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.

With God thoughts are colors, with us they are pigments-even the most abstract one may be accompanied by physical pain.

Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.