Peace is a virtual, mute, sustained victory of potential powers against probable greeds

The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.

Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.

You have certainly observed the curious fact that a given word which is perfectly clear when you hear it or use it in everyday language, and which does not give rise to any difficulty when it is engaged in the rapid movement of an ordinary sentence becomes magically embarrassing, introduces a strange resistance, frustrates any effort at definition as soon as you take it out of circulation to examine it separately and look for its meaning after taking away its instantaneous function.

Man cannot bear his own portrait. The image of his limits and his own determinacy exasperates him, drives him mad.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.