“Man is an exception, whatever he is. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.” — G.K. Chesterton

“You can tell the character of every man when you see how he gives and receives praise.” — Seneca

“To learn a man’s character, mark how he takes a favour.” — Archbishop Richard Whately

“If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.” — G.C. Lichtenberg

“To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports us — when we succeed, it betrays us.” — Charles Caleb Colton

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” — Voltaire

Also:

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” — Gandhi

“Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.” — Montesquieu

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.” — Leonardo

“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” — Nietzsche

“Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.” — Voltaire

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.” — Tolstoy

“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.” — Montaigne

“Opinions are made to be changed, or how is truth to be got at?” — Lord Byron

“Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.” — G.C. Lichtenberg

“The really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.” — Albert Einstein

“Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad; when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.” — W.H. Auden

“It is well to read everything of something and something of everything.” — Henry Brougham

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” — Inscribed on Thomas Huxley’s memorial

“The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.” — Horace Walpole

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.” — Francis Bacon

“Good can imagine Evil, but Evil cannot imagine Good.” — W.H. Auden

“Good men seek it by the natural means of the virtues; evil men, however, try to achieve the same goal by a variety of concupiscences, and that is surely an unnatural way of seeking the good. Don’t you agree?” — Boethius

“For never, never, wicked man was wise.” — Homer

“Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.” — G.K. Chesterton

American artist Dennis Oppenheim denied that his 1997 Device to Root Out Evil, above, had an anti-religious message. “Pointing a steeple into the ground directs it to hell as opposed to heaven,” he told one interviewer. “It’s a very simple gesture.”