Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

Genius ... is necessarily intolerant of fetters.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

Hear Everything and judge for yourself

Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change - only to give stability to one beautiful moment.

One has to spend many years in learning how to be happy.