Ideas without action are useless.

Now I feel as if I should succeed in doing something in mathematics, although I cannot see why it is so very important. . . The knowledge doesn't make life any sweeter or happier, does it?

Where once stood the steadfast pines, great, beautiful, sweet, my hand touched raw, moist stumps. All about lay broken branches, like the antlers of stricken deer. The fragrant, piled-up sawdust swirled and tumbled about me. An unreasoning resentment flashed through me at the ruthless destruction of the beauty that I love.

Often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.

Smells are the fallen angels of the senses.

The things you do today that you don't have to do will determine who, what, and where you will be when it is too late to do anything about the things you should have done.

I regard philanthropy as a tragic apology for wrong conditions under which human beings live.