Rascals are always sociable, more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!

The word of man is the most durable of all material.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.

In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

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.

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

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.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

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.

Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.

The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.