I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
I could not conceive of a secondary role, and this was precisely why, in reality, I occupied the lowest. Either a hero or mud. There was no middle.
If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'
Inventors and men of genius have almost always been regarded as fools at the beginning -- and very often at the end -- of their careers.
It is not miracles that generate faith, but faith that generates miracles.
Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don't trouble it, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent.
Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.
Oh, tell, me, who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests? And that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interest, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else? Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure innocent child.
Realists do not fear the results of their study.
The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.
The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.
Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don't know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you ... we should be begging to be under control again at once.