“Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me.”

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.

It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.

If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.

The history books which contain no lies are extremely tedious.

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

Science neither cares to please nor to displease. She is inhuman. It is not science but poetry that charms and consoles. And that is why poetry is more necessary than science.

When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

Of all sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

Dictionary: The universe in alphabetical order.

Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.

The wonder is, not that the field of stars is so vast, but that man has measured it.

People who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them.

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.

Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.

The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

Nature and Books belong to the eyes that see them.

A written word is the choicest of relics.