the last steps of life are ever slow and difficult.

Why shouldn't man be as angry about not having always been alive as about having to stop being alive?

There are only two distinct classes of people on this earth, those who espouse enthusiasm and those who despise it.

[On Russia:] In every way, there is something gigantic about this people: ordinary dimensions have no applications whatever to it. I do not mean by this that true greatness and stability are never met with; but their boldness, their imaginativeness knows no bounds. With them everything is colossal rather than well-proportioned, audacious rather than well-considered, and if they do not attain their goals, it is because they exceed them.

Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened.

O memory, thou bitter sweet,--both a joy and a scourge!

A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.