Think of the egotism of a man who believes that an infinite being wants his praise!

And what is the great thing that the stage does? It cultivates the imagination. And . . . the imagination constitutes the great difference between human beings. . . . The imagination is the mother of pity, the mother of generosity, the mother of every possible virtue. It is by the imagination that you are enabled to put yourself in the place of another.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.

Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power.

The savage prays to a stone that he calls a god, while the Christian prays to a god he calls a spirit, and the prayers of both are equally useful.

To the wise man, to the wise nation, the mistakes of the past are the torches of the present.