Wisdom lies in taking everything with good humor and a grain of salt.

Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.

Plasticity loves new moulds because it can fill them, but for a man of sluggish mind and bad manners there is decidedly no place like home.

Wisdom comes from disillusionment.

Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.