Quotes about Insight

How can you see better of a dark night than anybody else, never mind how foolish?

Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.

It's pleasant to sit by, a demi-god, and hear the surmisings of mortals, upon things they know nothing about; theology, or amber, or ambergris, it's all the same. But then, did I always out with every thing I know, there would be no conversing with these comical creatures.

The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it. 76

The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.

The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

I have found that the more I teach those who want to learn, the more I learn.

One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.

When I was a graduate student, I actually took a course in development economics and I thought it was the most boring thing in the world.

There is no genius free from some tincture of madness.

Speech is the mirror of the mind.