Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don't shoot up too high, so in practical arts the leaves read more

Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don't shoot up too high, so in practical arts the leaves and flowers of theory must be pruned and the plant kept close to its proper soil- experience.

It needs some intelligence to be truly selfish. The unintelligent can only be self-righteous.

It needs some intelligence to be truly selfish. The unintelligent can only be self-righteous.

Avoid making irrevocable decisions when tired or hungry.

Avoid making irrevocable decisions when tired or hungry.

It is the fate of every great achievement to be pounced upon by pedants and imitators who drain it of read more

It is the fate of every great achievement to be pounced upon by pedants and imitators who drain it of life and turn it into an orthodoxy which stifles all stirrings of originality.

Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. read more

Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.

I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

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.

There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people: we are laying up for ourselves the read more

There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people: we are laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man read more

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.