A man is often more clever than one other, but not than all others.

Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others.

"The mark of an intelligent and educated man is one who does not really accept the idea of "work". That is to say; he does not accept the process of doing chores every day, that aren't in the least bit interesting to him, just in order to go on living."

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.

A man is capable of thought. A crowd is not.

- I have questions, he said.
- Then you have more wisdom than most.

If you only had brains in your head you would be as good a man as any of them, and a better man than some of them.

His was not a small mind bothered by logic and consistency.

A wise man said: When knowledge increases, loquacity decreases.

For the more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people, — the less, indeed, other people can be to him. This is why a high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.