 Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and times - and this is the worst of all - before we have new ones. |
| Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever. |
| If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger. |
| With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing. |
| If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly. |
| Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will. |
| Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own. |
| Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous. |
| Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much. |
| Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all. |
| It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into. |
| I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too. |
| We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him. |
| Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it. |
| Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads. |
| Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams. |
| There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly. |
| There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself. |
| With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet. |
| Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm. |
