It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.

Chaos

Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.

Commitment

The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.

Dignity

Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand.

Emotions

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

Family

The family is one of nature's masterpieces.

Focus

The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under which it strives to bring everything.

Fun

Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.

History and Historians

History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.

Intolerance

Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.

Life and Living

The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

Men and Women

When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.

Parents and Parenting

Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.

Potential

Man is as full of potential as he is of importance.

Saints

It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.

Skepticism

There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.

Sympathy

There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.

Tragedies

The little word is has its tragedies: it marries and identifies different things with the greatest innocence; and yet no two are ever identical, and if therein lies the charm of wedding them and calling them one, therein too lies the danger.

Wives

The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character.