When a man holds his tongue it does not signify much. But when a woman dispenses with the office of the mighty member, when she sheathed her natural weapon at a trying moment, it means that she trusts to still more formidable enginery; to tears it may be, a solvent more powerful than that with which Hannibal softened the alpine rocks.

To be civilized is to be potentially master of all possible ideas, and that means that one has got beyond being shocked, although one preserves one's own moral aesthetic preferences.

Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.

You hear that boy laughing?you think he's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.

The joy of life is to put out one's power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.

The only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas, or, at least not to express them.