Not everywhere where there is water, are there frogs; but where you have frogs, there you will find water. In the formation of species Nature gets, as it were, into a cul-de-sac; she cannot make her way through, and is disinclined to turn back. Hence the stubbornness of national character. Many a man knocks about on the wall with his hammer, and believes that he hits the right nail on the head every time. Those who oppose intellectual truths do but stir up the fire, and the cinders fly about and burn what they had else not touched. Those from whom we are always learning are rightly called our masters; but not every one who teaches us deserves this title. It is with you as with the sea: the most varied names are given to what is in the end only salt water. It is said that vain self-praise stinks in the nostrils. That may be so; but for the kind of smell which comes from unjust blame by others the public has no nose at all. There are problematical natures which are equal to no position in which they find themselves, and which no position satisfies. This it is that causes that hideous conflict which wastes life and deprives it of all pleasure. Dirt glitters as long as the sun shines. He is the happiest man who can set the end of his life in connection with the beginning. A state of things in which every day brings some new trouble is not the right one. The Hindoos of the Desert make a solemn vow to eat no fish. To venture an opinion is like moving a piece at chess it may be taken, but it forms the beginning of a game that is won. 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. 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. A rainbow which lasts a quarter of an hour is looked at no more. 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. 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 Fates determine its length, and to that all the rest must join in submitting itself. Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes that we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.