The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.
In all ages, far back into prehistory, we find human beings have painted and adorned themselves.
Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
There is no upper limit to what individuals are capable of doing with their minds. There is no age limit that bars them from beginning. There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome if they persist and believe.
After your first day of cycling, one dream is inevitable. A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow.
The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice.
All men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings.
I hope, or I could not live.
He began to realize that you cannot even fight happily with creatures that stand upon a different mental basis to yourself.
Will is stronger than fact: it can mold and overcome fact.
It seems to me that I am more to the Left than you, Mr Stalin.
There is no remorse like the remorse of Chess.
No compulsion in the world is stronger than the urge to edit someone else’s document.
We live in reference to past experience and not to future events, however inevitable.
Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart.
Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this Earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars.
Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future.
Endless conflicts. Endless misunderstanding. All life is that. Great and little cannot understand one another.
Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all.
Find the thing you want to do most intensely, make sure that’s it, and do it with all your might. If you live, well and good. If you die, well and good. Your purpose is done.