Thought is essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress.

Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.

... even if Lucretius was wrong, and the soul is immortal, it is nevertheless steadily changing its interests and its possessions.Our lives are mortal if our soul is not; and the sentiment which reconciled Lucretius to death is as much needed if we are to face many deaths, as if we are to face only one.

Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.

The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour.

The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.

Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of crude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm's length.