A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced hat he has lost because of a mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were also mistakes at ever step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it.

It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.

I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine.

Power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.

Everything depends on upbringing.

If there was a reason why he preferred the liberal tendency to the conservative one (also held to by many of his circle), it was not because he found the liberal tendency more sensible, but it more closely suited his manner of life.

There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that, whatever the outcome, there will always be people to say: 'I said then that it would be so'