“Hands are integral with brains, almost another lobe for intelligence. What one does not know through one's hands, one does not truly know.”

Dans l'amitié comme dans l'amour on est souvent plus heureux par les choses qu'on ignore que par celles que l'on sait.
Variant translation: In friendship as in love, we are often happier due to the things we are unaware of than the things we know.
Maxim 441.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

The Principles of War (1913)

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

As quoted in Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin trans. Norman Waddell (2010) p. 179

Variant: For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.
Source: The Revolt of the Angels (1914), Ch. XXI

1900s, Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)
Context: Success does not lie entirely in the hands of any one of us. From the day the tower of Siloam fell, misfortune has fallen sometimes upon the just as well as the unjust. We sometimes see the good man, the honest man, the strong man, broken down by forces over which he had no control. If the hand of the Lord is heavy upon us the strength and wisdom of man shall avail nothing. But as a rule in the long run each of us comes pretty near to getting what he deserves. Each of us can, as a rule there are, of course, exceptions finally achieve the success best worth having, the success of having played his part honestly and manfully; of having lived so as to feel at the end he has done his duty; of having been a good husband, a good father; of having tried to make the world a little better off rather than worse off because he has lived; of having been a doer of the word and not a hearer only still less a mere critic of the doers. Every man has it in him, unless fate is indeed hard upon him, to win out that measure of success if he will honestly try.

Review of Le Misanthrope, by Molière, at the Piccadilly (1962), p. 117
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels
Context: "Now," said Giacomo Paradisi, "here you are, take the knife, it is yours."
"I don't want it," said Will. "I don't want anything to do with it."
"You haven't got the choice," said the old man. "You are the bearer now."
"I thought you said you was," said Lyra.
"My time is over," he said. "The knife knows when to leave one hand and settle in another, and I know how to tell..."

Therefore, in order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal and to know it well.
Source: Precepts and Judgments (1919), p. 175