This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then comes languor and decay.

There is no remorse like a remorse of chess. It is a curse upon man. There is no happiness in chess.

It's no use locking the door after the steed is stolen.

The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves on the other.

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

Be a man!... What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think that God had exempted [us]? He is not an insurance agent.

New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises 'Why then are you not taking part in them?