Pleasure is a by-product of doing something that is worth doing. Therefore, do not seek pleasure as such. Pleasure comes of seeking something else, and comes by the way.

Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates.

All social life, stability, progress, depend upon each man's confidence in his neighbor, a reliance upon him to do his duty.

The mark of an educated man is the ability to make a reasoned guess on the basis of insufficient information.

You will be courteous to your elders who have explored to the point from which you may advance; and helpful to your juniors who will progress farther by reason of your labors.

All that you may achieve or discover you will regard as a fragment of a larger pattern of the truth which from the separate approaches every true scholar is striving to descry.

Your aim will be knowledge and wisdom, not the reflected glamour of fame.

There's a Harvard man on the wrong side of every question.

I must follow them. I am their leader.

Parents have a child, and in doing so they bring into the world a monster that kills everything it comes in contact with.

Every one is expected to look out for himself here. I fancy that there would be very little rising if men were expected to rise for the sake of others, in America.

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

Fermat said he had a proof.

Sometimes it was hard to express how much you loved someone. You said the words, but you could never quite capture the depth of it. You could never quite hold someone tightly enough.

If something doesn't creep into a drawing that you're not prepared for, you might as well not have drawn it.

I was hanging out with Jonathan Richman last night.

Life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life.

We are the sons of Sorrow; we are the poets and the prophets and the musicians.

I think of every book as a single entity, and some have later gone on to become a series, often at the request of readers.