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.
Most men are so thoroughly subjective that nothing really interests them but themselves.
Physics is unable to stand on its own feet, but needs a metaphysics on which to support itself, whatever fine airs it may assume towards the latter.
The faculty for remembering is not diminished in proportion to what one has learnt, just as little as the number of moulds in which you cast sand lessens its capacity for being cast in new moulds.
It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.
My body and my will are one.
The heavy armor becomes the light dress of childhood; the pain is brief, the joy unending.
Knowledge is to certain extent a second existence.
I know of no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus of old used in closing: May all that have life be delivered from suffering.
A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.