What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

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.

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought and not as many of those who worry about their shortcomings believe an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.

For a guy who used to steal watches on the streets of Chandni Chowk for kicks, I surely think my success at the age of 22 was pretty early!

Sending our young men and women into battle is perhaps the most serious course of action a Nation can undertake.

The theme of exile is attractive to me, because it's sort of like the family business. Not just music, but travel.

As we say in Berlin, there are many ways to bake a parrot.

Reason is the first victim of strong emotion.

The most sumptuous experience of ingestion is in-between: remembering the last bite and looking forward to the next one.

I'm having bigger problems when I'm writing.

Some people are a little bit better than others, some people are great, some people are superior. It depends on the level of effort.

If you don't like the way you are, don't worry about it. You can change the way you are.