The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike.

Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.

Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.

What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every interference with that benign process is full of dangers.

I've made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark.

Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.

Puccini - silver macaroni, exquisitely tangled.