I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.

There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain

Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.

Clearly much that seemed valid seemed so only because he had been taught it from earliest youth.

There are many foolish people in the world and when a man in a rather high position puts on no frills, slaps them on the back, and tells them he'll do anything in the world for them, they are very likely to think him clever.

You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

I knew that suffering did not enoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things...it made them less than men; and I wrote ferociously that we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.