We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.
Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
Life without pain has no meaning.
Truth is no harlot who throws her arms round the neck of him who does not desire her; on the contrary, she is so coy a beauty that even the man who sacrifices everything to her can still not be certain of her favors.
Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.
Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
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.
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.