The unforgivable sin is the refusal to pardon.
Man is as full of potential as he is of importance.
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect.
The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.
The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.
A simple life is its own reward.
Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean.
There is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal, as if it were not a benefit and a joy to a man, being what he is, to know that many are, have been, and will be better than he.
It is war that wastes a nations wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation.
We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms.
I have no axe to grind; only my thoughts to burnish.
Man is not made to understand life, but to live it.
Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite; more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility.
It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.
Truth is a jewel which should not be painted over; but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light.
Life is judged with all the blindness of life itself.
Animals are born and bred in litters. Solitude grows blessed and peaceful only in old age.
Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic Christendom – picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode – may be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair.
Most men’s conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.
It is true that I am carrying out various methods of treatment recommended by doctors and dentists in the hope of dying in the remote future in perfect health.