nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.

I never believed in trying to do anything. Whatever I set out to do I found I had already accomplished.

It seems to me that every phenomenon, every fact, itself is the really interesting object. Whoever explains it, or connects it with other events, usually only amuses himself or makes sport of us, as, for instance, the naturalist or historian. But a single action or event is interesting, not because it is explainable, but because it is true.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.

Some people spend the day in complaining of a headache, and the night in drinking the wine that gives it.