How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action?
Freedom of the press is to the machinery of the state what the safety valve is to the steam engine.
A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles, for then he is off his guard.
No doubt, when modesty was made a virtue, it was a very advantageous thing for the fools, for everybody is expected to speak of himself as if he were one.
Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.
It is, indeed, only in old age that intellectual men attain their sublime expression, whilst portraits of them in their youth show only the first traces of it.
A man of business will often deceive you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely refuse to commit a theft.
The reason domestic pets are so lovable and so helpful to us is because they enjoy, quietly and placidly, the present moment.
The present is the only reality and the only certainty.
Empirical sciences prosecuted purely for their own sake, and without philosophic tendency are like a face without eyes.
People of Wealth and the so called upper class suffer the most from boredom.
To call the world God is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym.
Always to see the general in the particular is the very foundation of genius.
The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.
Ordinary people merely think how they shall ‘spend’ their time; a man of talent tries to ‘use’ it.
To truth only a brief celebration of victory is allowed between the two long periods during which it is condemned as paradoxical, or disparaged as trivial.
The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.
Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.
Where there is no love, a person’s faithfulness to the marriage bond is probably against nature.
We should be surprised that a matter that generally plays such an important part in the life of man has hitherto been almost entirely disregarded by philosophers, and lies before us as raw and untreated material.