The exhaustion of the passions is the beginning of wisdom.

What a host of little incidents, all deep-buried in the past -- problems that had once been urgent, arguments that had once been keen, anecdotes that were funny only because one remembered the fun. Did any emotion really matter when the last trace of it had vanished from human memory; and if that were so, what a crowd of emotions clung to him as to their last home before annihilation? He must be kind to them, must treasure them in his mind before their long sleep.

It's a very remarkable story." "Remarkable's a well-chosen word. It doesn't give you away.

The first quarter-century of your life was doubtless lived under the cloud of being too young for things, while the last quarter-century would normally be shadowed by the still darker cloud of being too old for them; and between those two clouds, what small and narrow sunlight illumines a human lifetime!

The exhaustion of the passions is the beginning of wisdom.

And I believe that the Binomial Theorem and a Bach Fugue are, in the long run, more important than all the battles of history.

There's only one thing more important... and that is, after you've done what you set out to do, to feel that it's been worth doing.