What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears...as easily as we open and shut our eyes.

The celebrated painter Gainsborough got as much pleasure from seeing violins as from hearing them.

If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever. Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later.

Nothing reveals a man's character better than the kind of joke at which he takes offense.

We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.