"We are wont to imagine that it would be a pleasant pastime to be a potato and grow in the dark, but it is not so."

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."

"To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?"

"The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water and time."

"What does it mean to be a philosopher? It means to be able to say, 'I have seen the world, and I have found it good.'"