Nothing can be believed unless it is first understood; and that for any one to preach to others that which either he has not understood nor they have understood is absurd.

Chess is a good way to learn, to keep your brain fit and the ego in check, a mental form of your local gymnasium. Those who see chess merely as a means of self-proof make the game experience uncomfortable and drive many of the better, more sensitive brains to analysis, correspondence, problems, studies and the like.

And now, my friend, I am going to expose to you all my weaknesses. All men, I believe, are under a necessity of paying tribute at some time or other to Love, and it is vain to strive to avoid it. I was a philosopher, yet this tyrant of the mind triumphed over all my wisdom; his darts were of greater force than all my reasonings, and with a sweet constraint he led me wherever he pleased.

Nothing can be believed unless it is first understood; and that for any one to preach to others that which either he has not understood nor they have understood is absurd.

I had wished to find in philosophy and religion a remedy for my disgrace; I searched out an asylum to secure me from love... duty, reason and decency, which upon other occasions have some power over me, are here useless. The Gospel is a language I do not understand when it opposes my passion... but when love has once been sincere how difficult it is to determine to love no more! 'Tis a thousand times more easy to renounce the world than love. I hate this deceitful, faithless world; I think no more of it.

In doubting we come to inquiry; by inquiry we perceive the truth.

I preferred the weapons of dialectic to all the other teachings of philosophy, and armed with these, I chose the conflicts of disputation rather than the trophies of war.