It gives liberty and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy.
The immense majority of our species are candidates for humanity, and nothing more.
It would have been a joy to me to be smiled upon, loved, encouraged, welcomed, and to obtain what I was so ready to give, kindness and goodwill. But to hunt down consideration and reputation – to force the esteem of others – seemed to me an effort unworthy of myself, almost a degradation.
At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses of mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studies bring us back to this study.
The great majority of men are but tangled skeins, imperfect keyboards, so many specimens of restless or stagnant chaos – and what makes their situation almost hopeless is the fact that they take pleasure in it. There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health.
Nothing finite is true, is interesting, is worthy to fix my attention. All that is particular is exclusive, and all that is exclusive repels me.
The musician of the present day, not being able to give us what is beautiful, torments himself to give us what is new.
Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you.
Philosophy starts with doubt and loves only truth.
Men don’t achieve truth because they lack humility and love of truth. They won’t criticize their own beliefs. Truth would overwhelm them.
Men prefer the false due to habit, passion, will. Preference for truth is rare. Men are ruled by their fear of truth.
Every living being seeks instinctively to complete itself.
The beautiful souls of the world have an art of saintly alchemy, by which bitterness is converted into kindness, the gall of human experience into gentleness, ingratitude into benefits, insults into pardon.
The mind must have for ballast the clear conception of duty, if it is not to fluctuate between levity and despair.
Self-interest is an inexhaustible source of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to see truly is extraordinarily small.
If man was what he ought to be, he would be adored by the animals...
Liberty, equality – bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness.
To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand.
Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship.
Nature does at least what she can to translate into visible form the wealth of the creative formula. By the vastness of the abysses into which she penetrates, in the effort – the unsuccessful effort – to house and contain the eternal thought, we may measure the greatness of the divine mind.