Necessity is the constant scourge of the lower classes, ennui of the higher ones..

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, see….

He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts..

In their hearts women think that it is men's business to earn money and theirs to spend it..

Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read d….

Where there is no love, a person's faithfulness to the marriage bond is probably against nature..

It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the ….

At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultima….

At bottom, every state regards another as a gang of robbers who will fall upon it as soon as there is an opportunity..

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are..

There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems t….

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else..

(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the….

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

Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth..

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

What a man can do and suffer is unknown to himself till some occasion presents itself which draws out the hidden power. Just as one sees not in the w….

Malebranche teaches that we see all things in God himself. This is certainly equivalent to explaining something unknown by something even more unknow….

Vengeance taken will often tear the heart and torment the conscience..

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes..

I observed once to Goethe that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, "Yes! because the absent frie….