Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival.

Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival.

The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.

The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.

When the Greeks said, "Whom the gods love die young," they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored read more

When the Greeks said, "Whom the gods love die young," they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die; young and playful.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.

To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there. - The read more

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there. - The Tempation to Exist.

Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which read more

Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle read more

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life. Moreover, when we have an alibi for not writing a book, painting a picture, and so on, we have an alibi for not writing the greatest book and not painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in obtaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement.