To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.

Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.

The first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. 'I am no such thing,' it would say; 'I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone.

Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its string can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it.

To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein

Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.

All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish.