like moving a piece at chess: it may be taken,
but it forms the beginning of a game that is won.

108

It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and
the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do
violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth.

109

Truth belongs to the man, error to his age. This is why it has been said
that, while the misfortune of the age caused his error, the force of his
soul made him emerge from the error with glory.

110

Every one has his peculiarities and cannot get rid of them; and yet many
a one is destroyed by his peculiarities, and those too of the most
innocent kind.

111

If a man does think too much of himself, he is more than he believes
himself to be.

112

In art and knowledge, as also in deed and action, everything depends on
a pure apprehension of the object and a treatment of it according to its
nature.

113

When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age,
it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.

114

I pity those who make much ado about the transitory nature of all things
and are lost in the contemplation of earthly vanity: are we not here to
make the transitory permanent? This we can do only if we know how to
value both.

115

A rainbow which lasts a quarter of an hour is looked at no more.

116

It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a
work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but
if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail
to make the most gratifying discoveries,--to find new qualities in the
work itself and new faculties in myself.

117

Faith is private capital, kept in one's own house. There are public
savings-banks and loan-offices, which supply individuals in their day of
need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.

118

Real obscurantism is not to hinder the spread of what is true, clear,
and useful, but to bring into vogue what is false.

119

During a prolonged study of the lives of various men both great and
small, I came upon this thought: In the web of the world the one may
well be regarded as the warp, the other as the woof. It is the little
men, after all, who give breadth to the web, and the great men firmness
and solidity; perhaps, also, the addition of some sort of pattern. But
the scissors of the Fa