Take life too seriously, and what is it worth? If the morning wake us to no new joys, if the evening bring us not the hope of new pleasure, is it worthwhile to dress and undress?
The best genius is that which absorbs and assimilates everything without doing the least violence to its fundamental destiny.
Give me the benefit of your convictions, if you have any; but keep your doubts to yourself, for I have enough of my own.
One is led astray alike by sympathy and coldness, by praise and by blame.
If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.
Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.
We are the slaves of objects around us, and appear little or important according as these contract or give us room to expand.
One glance, one word from you gives more pleasure than all the wisdom of this world.
Know’st thou yesterday, its aim and reason? Work’st thou will today for worthier things? Then calmly wait the morrow’s hidden season, And fear thou not, what hap soe’er it brings.
First let a man teach himself, and then he will be taught by others.
The history of science is science itself; the history of the individual, the individual.
It is related of an Englishman that he hanged himself to avoid the daily task of dressing and undressing.
Nothing is true, but that which is simple.
There is repetition everywhere, and nothing is found only once in the world.
Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.
Mere curiosity adds wings to every step.
The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.
With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.
The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.
When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.