Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

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

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

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

Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

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 parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

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

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

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.

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

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

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

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.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

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

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.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

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

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.

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

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

A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

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

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

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

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.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

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.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

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

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

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.

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

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

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.

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