“All things obey fixed laws.”

Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life.

So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.

It is a pleasure for to sit at ease Upon the land, and safely for to see How other folks are tossed on the seas That with the blustering winds turmoiled be.

It is pleasurable, when winds disturb the waves of a great sea, to gaze out from land upon the great trials of another.

Life is one long struggle in the dark.

The mask is torn off, while the reality remains

Confess then, naught from nothing can become, Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow, Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.

For out of doubt In these affairs ’tis each man’s will itself That gives the start, and hence throughout our limbs Incipient motions are diffused.

The highest summits and those elevated above the level of other things are mostly blasted by envy as by a thunderbolt.

The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.

You may complete as many generations as you please during your life; none the less will that everlasting death await you.

What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?

Thus the sum Forever is replenished, and we live As mortals by eternal give and take. The nations wax, the nations wane away; In a brief space the generations pass, And like to runners hand the lamp of life One unto other.

All things around, convulsed with violent thunder, seem to tremble, and the mighty walls of the capacious world appear at once to have started and burst asunder.

So, little by little, time brings out each several thing into view, and reason raises it up into the shores of light.

And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all.

Before things are written down they don’t exist in quite the same way. The act of fixing them in words gives them a kind of currency that can be traded.

It isn’t what you earn but how spend it that fixes your class.

Before I left the castle I so fixed its entrances that never more can the Count enter there Undead.

The memories of childhood are like clear candles in an acre of night, illuminating fixed scenes from surrounding darkness.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.

Again two manufacturers may employ the same amount of fixed, and the same amount of circulating capital; but the durability of their fixed capitals may be very unequal.

In my own personal life, God plays a great role in the risk, because I pray before I go into the operating room for every case, and I ask him to give me wisdom, to help me to know what to do – and not only for operating, but for everything.