“Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?”

What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it.

There are things I can’t force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

Shakespeare’s fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.

The best doctor is the one you run to and can’t find.

The world is the house of the strong.

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

In order to get as much fame as one’s father one has to much more able than he.

Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.

Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: ‘My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.’ This stranger is a theologian.

Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.

There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.

You can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his.

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.

Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.

A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.

If the gentleman has ability, he is magnanimous, generous, tolerant, and straightforward, through which he opens the way to instruct others.

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

Think of yourself as a role model for others-showing that you can be kind, generous, loving, and rich!

But the Princeton fellowship was somewhat more generous, since I had not actually won the Putnam competition… Thus Princeton became the choice for my graduate study location.

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.