...we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others. - William Somerset Maugham

You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

I happen to think we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.

I think I can tell you. I’ve always felt that there was something pathetic in the founders of religion who made it a condition of salvation that you should believe in them. It’s as though they needed your faith to have faith in themselves.