It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

Almost without exception, everything society has considered a social advance has been prefigured first in some utopian writing.

The plague of gold strikes far and near.

They best pass over the world who trip over it quickly; for it is but a bog. If we stop, we sink.

A rill in a barnyard and the Grand Canyon represent, in the main, stages of valley erosion that began some millions of years apart.

I own a hundred and fifty books, but I have no bookcase. Nobody will lend me a bookcase.

Everyday has to be different for me. Even if people are like, "You dressed up like a character today, it's not Halloween."

I wanted you to go away, because it hurts to be with you when I can't see you." - Po

Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.

I do find myself at the moment, due to the success of School of Rock, to be on people's radar a little.

I am convinced that in the arts, committees are useless.