"Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents"
"Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other"
"Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!"
"As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself"
"Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people"
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident"
"After your death you will be what you were before your birth"
"A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations"
"A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes"
"Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost"
"Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head"
"Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them"
"Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude"
"Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune"
"For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible"
"Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour"
"Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world"
"Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right"
"A man can be himself only so long as he is alone"
