Only in a novel are all things given full play.

The Christian fear of the pagan outlook has damaged the whole consciousness of man.

Europe's the mayonnaise, but America supplies the good old lobster.

“There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.”

“Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.”

“Knowledge is love and light and vision.”

“Without education, you’re not going anywhere in this world.”

“Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.”

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”

“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.”

“Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.”

“I cannot live without books.”

“One always begins with the simple, then comes the complex, and by superior enlightenment one often reverts in the end to the simple. Such is the course of human intelligence.”

“All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.”

“The more a man knows, the less he talks.”

“It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.”

It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part

“Knowledge with action converts adversity into prosperity.”

“When I want to read a good book, I write one.”

“To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge”

“Each path to knowledge involves different rules and these rules are not interchangeable.” 

“Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes).” 

Sports are such a great teacher. I think of everything they've taught me: camaraderie, humility, how to resolve differences.

“Do I need my number retired throughout the course of the league to acknowledge what I’ve done? No.”