Any book which is at all important should be re-read immediately

Music is the melody whose text is the world

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal

To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence

Pride is the direct appreciation of oneself

Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability

Reading is thinking with someone else’s head instead of one’s own

A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial

One should use common words to say uncommon things.

That I could clamber to the frozen moon. And draw the ladder after me

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see

Time is that in which all things pass away.

A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man.

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head

Truth is most beautiful undraped

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

Each day is a little life

Life is a constant process of dying

The world is my idea.

Rascals are always sociable, more’s the pity

How shall a man be proud, when his conception is a crime, his birth a penalty, his life a labour, and death a necessity!

To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.

Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other

The only freedom that exists is of a metaphysical character. In the physical world freedom is an impossibility

It is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

Conscience accompanies every act with the comment: You should act differently, although its true sense is: You could be other than you are

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character

The actual facts of morality are too much on my side for me to fear that my theory can ever be replaced or upset by any other

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him

I am often surprised by the cleverness, and now and again by the stupidity of my dog; and I have similar experiences with mankind.

A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots

The longer a man’s fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.

Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom

To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain

Religions are the children of ignorance, and they do not long survive their mother

Pantheism is only a polite form of atheism.

Philosophy of religion really amounts to philosophizing on certain favorite assumptions that are not confirmed at all

Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine

To call the world God is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym

A man cannot serve two masters: so it is either reason or the scriptures.

The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it

The eternal being which, as it lives in us, also lives in every animal… the animal is in essence absolutely the same thing that we are

Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think

Whatever one may say, the happiest moment of the happy man is the moment… falling asleep, and the unhappiest moment of the unhappy that of his awaking

The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame

Money is human happiness in the abstract.

The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

Ordinary people merely think how they shall ‘spend’ their time; a man of talent tries to ‘use’ it.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain

If a man does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free

No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose

Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident

Life is a constant process of dying.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people

We seldom think of what we have, but always of what we lack

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies

No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.

A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner.

To be alone is the fate of all great minds—a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils.

There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain

It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards

What people commonly call fate is mostly their own stupidity

The word of man is the most durable of all material

Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us