Knowledge

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.

Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do

The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs

The greatest pleasure I know is to do something by stealth and have it found out by accident

In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one's readings is paying off one's debts

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

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience

It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun

A wise man seeks wisdom; a madman thinks that he has found it.

The things we really know are not the things we have merely read about or heard about, but the things we have lived, have experienced, have been sensible of

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral

If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go

Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

A good book ought to be bound in edible covers.

To get drunk with ink is more worth while than to get drunk with brandy.

Nowhere in the world do they play chess so skilfully as in Paris, and nowhere in Paris as they do at this coffee-house.

My mind is no better than another's, but I have been lucky enough to chance on certain ways, which have led me to a certain method by means of which it seems to me that I may by degrees augment my knowledge to the modest measure of my intellect and my length of days.

I shall be very glad to make plain in this discourse the paths I have followed, and to picture my life so that all may judge of it, and by the setting forth of their opinions may furnish me with yet other means of improvement.