We remember childhood as the fabulous years of our lives, and nations remember their childhood as fabulous years.

The world laughs at things it would really prefer to admire, and like Aesop's fox it criticizes things it covets.

He who doubts, knows - knows as much as can be known.

I may be wrong, but it seems rare in our age to find a widely praised person whose own mouth is not the source of that praise.

The old man, especially if he is in society in the privacy of his thoughts, though he may protest the opposite, never stops believing that, through some singular exception of the universal rule, he can in some unknown and inexplicable way still make an impression on women.

That is why all great men are modest: they consistently measure themselves not in comparison to other people but to the idea of perfection ever present in their minds, an ideal infinitely clearer and greater than any common people have, and they also realize how far they are from fulfilling their ideal.

Men seldom act from a correct sense of what may be harmful or useful to them.