She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller

There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason.

A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past.