It is the acme of life to understand life.

Catastrophes come when some dominant institution, swollen like a soap-bubble and still standing without foundations, suddenly crumbles at the touch of what may seem a word or idea, but is really some stronger material source.

Men almost universally have acknowledged providence, but that fact has had no force to destroy natural aversions and fears in the presence of events.

If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.

As widowers proverbially marry again, so a man with the habit of friendship always finds new friends.

Love is at once more animal than friendship and more divine.

Those who cannot remember the pastare condemned to repeat it. or: Those who have never heard of good system development practice are condemned to reinvent it.