To make a vow is a greater sin than to break one.

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.

In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all.

The attention was flattering. For the first five minutes. Now I know how poems feel.

One cannot overestimate the options the West has available with which it can apply pressure on Russia.

There are many dramas that I would like to make: dramas based on real stories. It's approaching things from the other side.

Why spend a day in the library when you can learn the same thing by working in the laboratory for a month?

As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat.

I don’t have any doubt in my mind that there will come a time when we will see violence against animal rights abusers.

I resolved that no revolutionary movement was going to be brought into being in the USA unless I brought it into being.

To me what really matters is that it shouldn't matter to you what day of the week it is.

The danger is [in using psychedelic drugs], just to put it out there, is madness.