The mind cannot foresee its own advance.

The mind cannot foresee its own advance.

Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember. - Aenid.

Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember. - Aenid.

Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are read more

Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are no schools for creativeness. A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made.

There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives.

There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives.

People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.

People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and read more

Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.

Habits... the only reason they persist is that they are offering some satisfaction. You allow them to persist by not read more

Habits... the only reason they persist is that they are offering some satisfaction. You allow them to persist by not seeking any other, better form of satisfying the same needs. Every habit, good or bad, is acquired and learned in the same way -- by finding that it is a means of satisfaction.

The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. read more

The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. This is true not only of the writer, artist and scientist, but of creators in other fields...With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do, they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.