Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.
There is something in us that is wiser than our head.
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.
Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.
Compassion is the basis of morality.
To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings.
Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.
I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow.
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear.
To read a book is to hold an entire world in the palm of your hand. That world is unique to you; no two readers can ever inhabit the same world.
If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
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.
To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.
The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.