Health so far outweighs all other blessings of life that a truly healthy beggar is happier than a sick king.
whoever violated trust once loses it forever.
Wealth is like sea water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
From the point of view of youth, life is an infinite future; from the point of view of old age, a very short past.
Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.
The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
The clever are not so much looking for loneliness as they avoid the fuss created by fools.
Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.
Each person can be completely himself only while he is alone.
Life is a constant process of dying.
Each person can be listened to, but not everyone is worth talking to.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
To get married means to have your rights and double your responsibilities.
It is better to find your mind in silence than in conversation.
He who does not like loneliness does not like freedom.
A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.
'Living happily' means living less unhappy.
Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.
If you have reason to suspect that a person is telling you a lie, look as though you believed every world he said. This will give him courage to go on; he will become vehement in his assertions, and in the end betray himself.
Societability of people is not based on love for society but on the fear of loneliness.
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
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 kind person.
Hundreds of objects that give people pleasure are boring for a big mind.
A vain person should know that the good opinion of others, which he so achieves, is much easier and more true to create by silence than by talkativeness.
A sense of humor is the only divine quality of man.
Treat a work of art like a prince let it speak to you first.
You should be very careful not to form a very favorable opinion about a person at first acquaintance otherwise in most cases you will have to be disappointed.
He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts.
Fate shuffles the cards and we play.
If we happen to hear how half a dozen sheep scornfully scold an outstanding person, then we will understand that to value the opinion of people highly will be a lot of honor for them.
Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.
He who has lost all hope has also lost all fear.
A fool chases pleasure and finds disappointment, a sage only avoids grief.
We rarely think about what we have, but we always worry about what we don't have.
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
Such is the lot of great people in the world they are only recognized when they are not alive.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit. genius hits a target no one else can see.
Compassion is the basis of morality.
Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure.
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.
One should use common words to say uncommon things.
Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.
It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.
Religion is the masterpiece of the arts of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
Great men are like eagles and build their nest on some lofty solitude.
Nine tenths of our happiness depends on health.
People are like watch mechanisms that start and run without knowing why.
So the problem is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought concerning that which everybody sees.
No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.
Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.
We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.
The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.
Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.
The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
We seldom think of what we have, but always that of what we lack.
Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced.
Most of the time, people take advantage of you when saying you're better at something than they are.
If they gossip about you, it means that you are enough not only for yourself, but also for others.
Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.
After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.
Don't tell your friend what your enemy shouldn't know.
The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.
