The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

We talk of wild animals, but the wildest animal is man.

The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

The lunatic is the man who lives in a small world but thinks it is a large one; he is the man who lives in a tenth of the truth, and thinks it is the whole. The madman cannot conceive any cosmos outside a certain tale or conspiracy or vision.

The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.