It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.

What a fool I have been!

This revelation of the secrets of nature, long mercifully withheld from man, should arouse the most solemn reflections in the mind and conscience of every human being capable of comprehension. We must indeed pray that these awful agencies will be made to conduce to peace among the nations, and that instead of wreaking measureless havoc upon the entire globe, may become a perennial fountain of world prosperity.

When a new book appears one should read an old one.

The Pashtun tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian Every large house is a real feudal fortress....Eve ry family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud....Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid.

He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

A man can wear out a particular part of his mind by continually using and tiring it, just in the same way he can wear out the elbows of his coat.