The roots of education are bitter, 

but the fruit is sweet.

Time, 

which changes people, 

does not alter the image 

we have retained of them.

The endeavour to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

I hope it is true 

that a man can die 

and yet not only live in others 

but give them life, 

and not only life, 

but that great consciousness of life.

Those who have the strength and the love 

to sit with a dying patient 

in the silence that goes beyond words 

will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, 

but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.

Life is a long preparation 

for something that never happens.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things 

than such as are both true and sufficient 

to explain their appearances.

Religions get lost as people do.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; 

it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, 

but of imagination.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, 

but the will to find out, 

which is the exact opposite.

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.

He who possesses art and science has religion; 

he who does not possess them, needs religion.

The merit of originality 

is not novelty; 

it is sincerity.

Our duty, 

as men and women, 

is to proceed 

as if limits to our ability did not exist. 

We are collaborators in creation.

Reason is not what decides love.

The life of the dead 

is placed 

in the memory of the living.

Where the senses fail us, 

reason must step in.

A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

All truth passes through three stages. 

First, it is ridiculed. 

Second, it is violently opposed. 

Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. 

Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive — 

to release our inner selves from the spiritual death 

that comes with living behind a facade 

designed to conform to external definitions 

of who and what we are.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions 

from insufficient premises.

The highest reward for a person's toil is 

not what they get for it, 

but what they become by it.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained 

not by its growth, 

but by washing away from it 

all that is not gold.

Penetrating so many secrets, 

we cease to believe in the unknowable. 

But there it sits nevertheless, 

calmly licking its chops.

You are the music 

while the music lasts.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. 

The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over 

and let the beautiful stuff out.

All we have to decide is 

what to do 

with the time that is given us.

'Tis the sharpness of our mind 

that gives the edge 

to our pains and pleasures.

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, 

we do not like to consider our equal.

There's a certain kind of scepticism that can't bear uncertainty.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, 

and the word happy would lose its meaning 

if it were not balanced by sadness. 

It is far better take things as they come along 

with patience and equanimity.

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.

Two roads diverged in a wood 

and I took the one less travelled by, 

and that has made all the difference.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

To be is to do.

Music expresses that which cannot be said 

and on which it is impossible to be silent.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, 

which means never losing your enthusiasm.

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is 

that science requires reasoning 

while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

There are a thousand thoughts 

lying within a man 

that he does not know 

till he takes up a pen to write.

Love is the poetry of the senses.

Eyes and ears are poor witnesses to people 

if they have uncultured souls.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. 

Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, 

a delicious element often.

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.

Reason obeys itself; 

and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

What every strong intellect wants to be is a guardian of integrity.

Experience without theory is blind, 

but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.