With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his. . . . It would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him.

Absolute honesty is as absurd an abstraction as an absolute temperature or an absolute value.

You have nothing to do but mention the quantum theory, and people will take your voice for the voice of science, and belive anything.

It is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor.

In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.

A contract for better for worse is a contract that should not be tolerated.

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.