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.

It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.

The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.

Why does a suppurating lung give so little warning and a sore on the finger so much?

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.