Where was it ever promised us that life on this earth can ever be easy, free from conflict and uncertainty, devoid of anguish and wonder and pain? … The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.

Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.

Words must surely be counted among the most powerful drugs man ever invented.

It is not that which is beautiful that pleases us, but that which pleases is is called beautiful.

We see things as we are, not as they are.