The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting..

No doubt, when modesty was made a virtue, it was a very advantageous thing for the fools, for everybody is expected to speak of himself as if he were….

The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts..

Whether we are in a pleasant or a painful state depends, finally, upon the kind of matter that pervades and engrosses our consciousness and what we c….

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by co….

The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innerm….

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

Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of k….

It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the….

Everybody's friend is nobody's..

Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if n….

...this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways is-nothing..

A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philis….

However, for the man who studies to gain insight, books and studies are merely rungs of the ladder on which he climbs to the summit of knowledge. As ….

The memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in choosing the things that should be co….

It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly recall the good time that is now no more; but that in good days, we have only a very cold a….

The fourfold root of the principle of sufficent reason is "Anything perceived has a cause. All conclusions have premises. All effects have causes. Al….

Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nouris….

When a new truth enters the world, the first stage of reaction to it is ridicule, the second stage is violent opposition, and in the third stage, tha….

The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it..

Optimism is not only a false but also a pernicious doctrine, for it presents life as a desirable state and man's happiness as its aim and object. Sta….