The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves.

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.

Ask yourself always: how can this be done better?

To make a vow is a greater sin than to break one.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.