It is said that vain self-praise stinks in the nostrils.  That may be so; but for the kind of smell which comes from unjust blame by others the public has no nose at all.

There are problematical natures which are equal to no position in which they find themselves, and which no position satisfies.  This it is that causes that hideous conflict which wastes life and deprives it of all pleasure.

Dirt glitters as long as the sun shines.

He is the happiest man who can set the end of his life in connection with the beginning.

A state of things in which every day brings some new trouble is not the right one.

The Hindoos of the Desert make a solemn vow to eat no fish.

To venture an opinion is like moving a piece at chess it may be taken, but it forms the beginning of a game that is won.

Truth belongs to the man, error to his age.  This is why it has been said that, while the misfortune of the age caused his error, the force of his soul made him emerge from the error with glory.

I pity those who make much ado about the transitory nature of all things and are lost in the contemplation of earthly vanity:  are we not here to make the transitory permanent?  This we can do only if we know how to value both.

A rainbow which lasts a quarter of an hour is looked at no more.

Faith is private capital, kept in one’s own house.  There are public savings-banks and loan-offices, which supply individuals in their day of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.

During a prolonged study of the lives of various men both great and small, I came upon this thought:  In the web of the world the one may well be regarded as the warp, the other as the woof.  It is the little men, after all, who give breadth to the web, and the great men firmness and solidity; perhaps, also, the addition of some sort of pattern.  But the scissors of the Fates determine its length, and to that all the rest must join in submitting itself.

Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes that we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.

The really foolish thing in men who are otherwise intelligent is that they fail to understand what another person says, when he does not exactly hit upon the right way of saying it.

One need only grow old to become gentler in one’s judgments.  I see no fault committed which I could not have committed myself.

Why should those who are happy expect one who is miserable to die before them in a graceful attitude, like the gladiator before the Roman mob?

By force of habit we look at a clock that has run down as if it were still going, and we gaze at the face of a beauty as though she still loved.

Dilettantism treated seriously, and knowledge pursued mechanically, end by becoming pedantry.

No one but the master can promote the cause of Art.  Patrons help the master—­that is right and proper; but that does not always mean that Art is helped.