Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133 B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure.

The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.

To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than self.

How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.

An emperor knows how to govern when poets are free to make verses, people to act plays, historians to tell the truth, ministers to give advice, the poor to grumble at taxes, students to learn lessons aloud, workmen to praise their skill and seek work, people to speak of anything, and old men to find fault with everything.

Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.

The future never just happened. It was created.