The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.

It was not dogma that moved the world, but life. Frequently, when rival parties and rival nations fought with one another as to which of two opposed dogmas was the truth, they had been arrayed against one another by more deep-seated and vital causes, and merely inscribed at the last the dogmas on their standards or chose them as watchwords or symbols. We are tired of those elaborate discussions of the fine, wire-drawn, subtle distinctions between sects, and those elaborate discussions of the principles involved in heresies, and we desire to see the real differences in life and conduct receive more attention.

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.

But it is not reason that governs love.

No one worth possessing can be quite possessed.

Wishing, of all employments is the worst.

History, a distillation of rumor.

Failure is an event, never a person.

Thou wilt scarce be a man before thy mother.

Experience proves that those are oftenest abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.

Every sin is the result of collaboration.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

Guilt is the source of sorrows, the avenging fiend that follows us behind with whips and stings.

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

And as for their appearances, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel.

Bad experience is a school that only fools keep going to.

The discontented man finds no easy chair.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies but which let wasps and hornets break through.

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.