“No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.”

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

There is truth in wine and children.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.

The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being.

Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away. A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Time is the moving image of reality.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.

He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.

I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance.

All one can really leave one’s children is what’s inside their heads. Education, in other words, and not earthly possessions, is the ultimate legacy, the only thing that cannot be taken away.

A mother who is not everything for her children: a friend, a teacher, a confidant, a source of joy and founded pride, inducement and soothing, reconciliator, judge and forgiver, that mother obviously chose the wrong job.

The only way a kid is going to practice is if it’s total fun for him and it was for me.

Until one looks back on one’s own past one fails to realise what an extraordinary view of the world a child has.

When I was a little kid, all I wanted to do was to escape what I thought was the country and get to a city. Probably film and television had influenced me so much, I really thought the key to happiness was living a very artificial life in a penthouse in New York with martini glasses.

Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder; it is best done when one is a child; after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it.