And nevertheless I have loved certain of my masters, and those strangely intimate though elusive relations existing between student and teacher, and the Sirens singing somewhere within the cracked voice of him who is first to reveal a new idea. The greatest seducer was not Alcibiades, afterall, it was Socrates.

The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions.

the press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are.

The landscape of my days appears to be composed, like mountainous regions, of varied materials heaped up pell-mell. There I see my nature, itself composite, made up of equal parts of instinct and training. Here and there protrude the granite peaks of the inevitable, but all about is rubble from the landslips of chance.

Morals are a matter of private agreement; decency is of public concern.

Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume to anticipate custom.

I think still that someone wiser than I might well have remained happy till his death.