It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.

There is no such thing as a dangerous woman; there are only susceptible men.

Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is.

Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.

Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do.

Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.

It is sometimes easier to head an institute for the study of child guidance than it is to turn one brat into a decent human being.

When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman.

The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.

Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional form and ceremonies.

Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many different ailments, but I have never heard of one who suffered from insomnia.

What a man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants.

It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.

Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.

Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers.

Any euphemism ceases to be euphemistic after a time and the true meaning begins to show through. It's a losing game, but we keep on trying.

August creates as she slumbers, replete and satisfied.

Civilizations die from philosophical calm irony and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.

If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind they are called vandals if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God they are called developers.

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy it will in the end not produce food either.

Every time a value is born existence takes on a new meaning every time one dies some part of that meaning passes away.

A humanist is anyone who rejects the attempt to describe or account for man wholly on the basis of physics chemistry or animal behaviour.

In a cat's eye, all things belong to cats.

As machines get to be more and more like men, men will come to be more like machines.

Metaphysics may be, after all, only the art of being sure of something that is not so and logic only the art of going wrong with confidence.

Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable.

To be individually righteous is the first of all duties, come what may to ones self, to one's country, to society, and to civilization itself.

The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at, but the moment when we are capable of seeing.

The wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit.

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

Until as recently as November of 1966, I had complete faith in the Warren Report. Of course, my faith in the Report was grounded in ignorance, since I had never read it.

Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance.

Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the later ignorance.

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

It ain't ignorance that causes all the trouble in this world. It's the things people know that ain't so.

Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

If not bliss, ignorance can at least be fun.

The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred.

The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.

Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.

Scientific men can hardly escape the charge of ignorance with regard to the precise effect of the impact of modern science upon the mode of living of the people and upon their civilisation.

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.