Science is good furniture for one's upper chamber, if there is common sense below.

Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.

It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.

Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.

Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.

And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.

There is measure in all things.

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.

With you I should love to live, with you be ready to die.

Whoever cultivates the golden mean avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace.

Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow!

Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man's cottage door and at the palaces of kings.

Many brave men lived before Agamemnon; but all are overwhelmed in eternal night, unwept, unknown, because they lack a sacred poet.

It is not the rich man you should properly call happy, but him who knows how to use with wisdom the blessings of the gods, to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonor worse...