There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

Man dwells apart, though not alone, He walks among his peers unread; The best of thoughts which he hath known For lack of listeners are not said.

Ideas came with explosive immediacy, like an instant birth. Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum; it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other.

Ideas came swarming through her, and like many people who labour in the obsession of solitude, she lacked the detachment to challenge them.