To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever.
Education perverts the mind since we are directly opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas first and observations last. This is why so few men of learning have such sound common sense as is quite common among the illiterate.
The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.
Honour is external conscience, and conscience is inward honour.
Before you take anything away, you must have something better to put in its place.
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.
Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
Motives are causes experienced from within.
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.
With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.
Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.
Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.
Human life, like all inferior goods, is covered on the outside with a false glitter; what suffers always conceals itself.
I love looking at famous people. Because of the way they look. Because of the way photography makes them look famous.
Reading is a mere makeshift for original thinking.
It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.
For the purpose of acquiring gain, everything else is pushed aside or thrown overboard, for example, as is philosophy by the professors of philosophy.
No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress.