Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids. East Of Eden

What a man has, so much he is sure of. Don Quixote

The best of men choose to know the One above all else; It is the famous "Eternal" within mortal men. But the majority of men are complacent, like well-fed cattle. They revel in mud; like donkeys, they prefer chaff to gold. Fragments

The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness. Reflections on Literature and Morality