The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to define the limit of our reasonable desires in respect of possessions.
It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.
It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can flourish.
The fly ought to be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity; for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else, and run away even before he comes near them, the fly lights upon his very nose.
The tallest oak tree once was an acorn that any pig could have swallowed.
If a relationship is perfectly natural there will be a complete fusion of the happiness of both of you-owing to fellow-feeling and various other laws which govern our natures, this is, quite simply, the greatest happiness that can exist.
A word too much always defeats its purpose.
I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and surprising combination of unedifying elements.
Everybody’s friend is nobody’s.
Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing us the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, does it not tell us what the future will be?
In their hearts women think that it is men’s business to earn money and theirs to spend it.
Scoundrels are always sociable.
Happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering-from positive evil.
Music is the answer to the mystery of life. The most profound of all the arts, It expresses the deepest thoughts of life.
Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the end he loses all patience he crushes both them and himself.
All our wanting comes from needs, thus we continiously suffer. The intellect teaches free will, free from suffering.
Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every remeeting a foretaste of the resurrection. That is why even people who are indifferent to each other rejoice so much if they meet again after twenty or thirty years of separation.
Whatever folly men commit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise forbearance; remember that when these faults appear in others it is our follies and vices that we behold.
What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles.