The first principle is that you must not fool yourself 

and you are the easiest person to fool.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, 

the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, 

and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

To care less for the truth 

than for what people think 

is a coward's part.

Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, 

with life and the material environment as partners. 

From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.

I heard the old, old, men say 

'all that's beautiful drifts away, 

like the waters.'

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. 

What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Everything becomes a little different 

as soon as it is spoken out loud.

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. 

We cannot cure the world of sorrows, 

but we can choose to live in joy.

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, 

not by faith, 

but by verification.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

It is too difficult to think nobly 

when one thinks only of earning a living.

If we were all given 

by magic 

the power to read each other's thoughts, 

I suppose the first effect would be 

to dissolve all friendships.

Pleasure is spread through the earth

In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.

In science 

the important thing 

is to modify and change one's ideas 

as science advances.

Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. 

New facts burst old rules; 

then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together 

into a reconciling law.