 To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them. |
| Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another. |
| Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think. |
| Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see. |
| There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. |
| It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards. |
| For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible. |
| With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy. |
| Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors. |
| Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots! |
| A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants. |
| Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them. |
| To live alone is the fate of all great souls. |
| We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success. |
| The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom. |
| If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him. |
| Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes. |
| Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost. |
| All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. |
| Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point. |
