Echoes

All is ephemeral — fame and the famous as well.

Who dainties love shall beggars prove.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

Men do not stumble over mountains, but over molehills

True glory takes root and spreads; all pretenses quickly fall like flowers, and nothing feigned can last.

We are dust and shadow.

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.

All great events hang by a hair. The man of ability takes advantage of everything and neglects nothing that can give him a chance of success; whilst the less able man sometimes loses everything by neglecting a single one of those chances.

Is it your reputation that's bothering you? But look at how soon we're all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands.

No man is entirely free from weakness and imperfection in this life. Men of the most exalted genius and active minds are generally most perfect slaves to the love of fame. They sometimes descend to as mean tricks and artifices in pursuit of honor or reputation as the miser descends to in pursuit of gold.

A man is great by deeds, not by birth. Even a drop of poison can cause destruction; one does not need a large amount.

It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live. And M. Sartre's hero does not perhaps give us the real meaning of his anguish when he insists on those aspects of man he finds repugnant, instead of basing his reasons for despair on certain of man's signs of greatness. The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.

Do not then consider life a thing of any value. For look at the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?

The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things—and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning.... All their mistakes are due to excess and vehemence and their neglect of the maxim of Chilon. They overdo everything; they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else. And they think they know everything, and confidently affirm it, and this is the cause of their excess in everything.

Man is a dream of a shadow. But when god-given brightness comes, a shining light rests on men, and life is sweet.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.

I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like.

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

The blue of the sky compensates for the brevity of life.

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

How many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible until they have been actually effected?