Our advice is that every man should remain in the path he has struck out for himself, and refuse to be overawed by authority, hampered by prevalent opinion, or carried away by fashion.
The various branches of knowledge always tend as a whole to stray away from life, and return thither only by a roundabout way.
For they are, in truth, text-books of life: they gather outer and inner experiences into a general and connected whole.
An important fact, an ingenious aperçu, occupies a very great number of men, at first only to make acquaintance with it; then to understand it; and afterwards to work it out and carry it further.
On the appearance of anything new the mass of people ask: What is the use of it? And they are not wrong. For it is only through the use of anything that they can perceive its value.