What are we doing down here? We prepare the blossoms of tomorrow. We all manure future humanity.

The altruism of foresters can serve as a motto for humanity in general: "We reap what we have not sown. We sow what we do not reap."

Truth is on a curve whose asymptote our spirit follows eternally.

Civilization is the art of creating useless needs.

Isn't this the perfect image of the noblest selflessness, and thereby presents an example and a model? It should be inspiring: like them, we are the units of a great social body, like them, we can serve and contemplate death with equanimity, subordinating our individual consciousness to collective consciousness.

"Genius is just enduring patience," said Buffon. This is far from complete. Genius is impatience in ideas and patience with the facts: a lively imagination and a calm judgment, rather like a liquid boiling in a cup that remains cold.

Truth is different from error in two respects: it is a little harder to prove and more difficult to admit.