The worst is that the very hardest thinking will not bring thoughts. They must come like good children of God and cry, "Here we are." You expend effort and energy thinking hard. Then, after you have given up, they come sauntering in with their hands in their pockets. If the effort had not been made to open the door, however, who knows when they could have come.

Every decided colour does a certain violence to the eye, and forces the organ to opposition.

When you take a man as he is, you make him worse. When you take a man as he can be, you make him better.

There are few who have at once thought and capacity for action. Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows.

Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon.

Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.

God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.