The aim of great books is ethical: to teach what it means to be a man. Every major form of literary art has taken for its deeper themes what T. S. Eliot called "the permanent things"-the norms of human action.
Some nights, valor and cold purpose aren't enough.
It is upon each soul to recognize its limit.
You must become like yourself.
And personally, I've lost my thirst for vengeance.
I am always yours to call, wherever the sea can reach.
Learn when to fear, and how to fear, and how much to fear, before you squander all you have left.
To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem. . . ridiculous.
I am convinced that most people do not grow up. . . our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.
I had to make some drastic choices to avoid losing myself.
Descartes constructed as noble a road of science, from the point at which he found geometry to that to which he carried it, as Newton himself did after him. . . . He carried this spirit of geometry and invention into optics, which under him became a completely new art.