“Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others’ death and dying the others’ life.”

Doctors cut, burn, and torture the sick, and then demand of them an undeserved fee for such services.

You may travel far and wide but never will you find the boundaries of the soul.

Change alone is unchanging.

Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.

The sun is the width of a human foot.

All men have the capacity of knowing themselves and acting with moderation.

What are men? Mortal gods. What are gods? Immortal men.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

Even what those with the greatest reputation for knowing it all claim to understand and defend are but opinions.

Nature loves to hide.

The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony.

We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.

There is exchange of all things for fire and of fire for all things, as there is of wares for gold and of gold for wares.

Life has the name of life, but in reality it is death.

If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult.

But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.

Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.

Divorce was emotionally traumatic for me. It was the death of a dream. I was in fairytale land, and the reality of it wasn’t so. But I don’t really like talking about it anymore, because it feels like a thousand lifetimes ago, and also it makes me look desperate like I need it for attention.

People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger in abstraction, and their light dies away.

It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.

Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him.