fiction

Men are slower to act from principle than self-interest, and far slower to act on principle than jealousy or revenge.

It is a mistake to believe we must know a thing to be influenced by it. It is a mistake to believe the thing must even be real.

Focus blurs, Gibson used to say. Focus blinds. You must take in all of a thing by seeing the totality of it, not by focusing on minutiae. This is as important for a ruler as it is for a painter.

Augustine once said that if there are such things as the past and the future, they do not exist as such but are only the present in their own times. The past, he says, exists only in memory and the future only in expectation. Neither is real

fear is death to reason, reason death to fear

There's no correlation between the orderliness of a man's work space and that of his mind.

Religion and science are old enemies. They're not, brother. Only fools think so.

True lessons require not only knowing, but that the student practices his knowledge again and again. Thus knowledge becomes us, and we become more than the animal and the machine. That is why the best teachers are students always, and the best students are never fully educated.

Imitate the action of stone. Never let the future disturb you.