Knowledge, like religion, must be "experienced" in order to be known. - Edwin Percy Whipple

Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.

In the life of the individual, as in the more comprehensive life of the state, pretension is nothing and power is everything.

A large proportion of human beings live not so much in themselves as in what they desire to be. They create what is called an ideal character, in an ideal form, whose perfections compensate in some degree for the imperfections of their own.