Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
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.
It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.
Music is the melody whose text is the world.
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.
The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn’t.
In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.
The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.
The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.