When the boy begins to understand that the visible point is preceded by an invisible point, that the shortest distance between two points is conceived as a straight line before it is ever drawn with pencil and paper...the fountain of all thought has been opened to him...the philosopher can reveal him nothing new, as a geometrician he has discovered the basis of all thought.

Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.

No doubt you are right... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.

Man cannot persist long in a conscious state, he must throw himself back into the unconscious, for his root lives there.

Such is the frailty of man that even where he makes the truest and most forcible impression in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish.

Mannerism is always longing to have done, and has no true enjoyment in work. A genuine, really great talent, on the other hand, has its greatest happiness in execution.

Forget not that the man who cannot enjoy his own natural gifts in silence, and find his reward in the exercise of them, will generally find himself badly off.