What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears...as easily as we open and shut our eyes.

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.

You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil - by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction.

We do not have to be mental health professionals to identify the traits of the possible sociopaths among us.

...you have changed everything for me- you rearranged the furniture and now you've changed the view from my window!...

It was the time of year that makes every poet’s heart sing and every lawyer question their life choices.

So I just went over and sat with him. Not a biggie. I wish people would stop trying to turn it into something more. He's just a kid. The weirdest-looking kid I've ever seen, yes. But just a kid.

Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.

No class of Americans, so far as I know, has ever objected . . . to any amount of governmental meddling if it appeared to benefit that particular class.

We all got up to dance. Oh, but we never got the chance!

I know I'm not bipolar or schizophrenic, but this career allows you to explore, to take some facets of yourself and spin it.

I am an honest person, transparent, that look citizens straight in their faces.