Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.

Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.

Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.

To write a novel, you need an iron butt.

I'd developed an apology-is-much-better-than-asking-for-permission mentality.

Sometimes it isn't fighting that's brave, it's facing the death you know is coming.

Pride had rather go out of the way than go behind.

A saint is a sinner who keeps on trying.

Ceaseless work, analysis, reflection, writing much, endless self-correction, that is my secret.

It can't happen here is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere.

The old guys like me started in the theatre. I was in the theatre for nine years.

The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.

Creation is great, and cannot be understood.