The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.

Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment

Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.

The reason why research is like sculpting from memory is that in neither is there a concrete visible subject to copy directly. The subject - as sculptors themselves are fond of saying - is hidden in the block of material.

Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.

Of true knowledge at any time, a good part is merely convenient, necessary indeed to the worker, but not to an understanding of his subject: One can judge a building without knowing where to buy the bricks; one can understand a violin sonata without knowing how to score for the instrument. The work may in fact be better understood without a knowledge of the details of its manufacture, of attention to these tends to distract from meaning and effect.

The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to solve.