FridayJan 16, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
Truth that has merely been learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; it adheres to us only Because it is put on. But truth acquired by thought of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs to
To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake.
The will is the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see.
The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.
Personal courage is really a very subordinate virtue...in which we are surpassed by the lower animals.
A word too much always defeats its purpose.
It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man Best reveals his character.
It is a great piece of folly to sacrifice the inner for the outer man.
Necessity is the constant scourge of the lower classes, ennui of the higher ones.
Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.
Money is human happiness in the abstract.
Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
We forfeit three fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
On a cold winters day, a group of porcupines huddled together to stay warm and keep from freezing. But soon they felt one anothers quills and moved apart. When the need for warmth brought them closer together again, their quills again forced them apart. They were driven back and forth at the mercy of their discomforts until they found the distance from one another that provided both a maximum of warmth and a minimum of pain. In human beings, the emptiness and monotony of the isolated self produces a need for society. This brings people together, but their many offensive qualities and intolerable faults drive them apart again. The optimum distance that they finally find that permits them to coexist is embodied in politeness and good manners. Because of this distance between us, we can only partially satisfy our need for warmth, but at the same time, we are spared the stab of one anothers quills.
When a man has reached a condition in which he believes that a thing must happen because he does not wish it, and that what he wishes to happen never will be, this is really the state called desperation.
Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
Genius is its own reward; for the best that one is, one must necessarily be for oneself.... Further, genius consists in the working of the free intellect., and as a consequence the productions of genius serve no useful purpose. The work of genius may be music, philosophy, painting, or poetry; it is nothing for use or profit. To be useless and unprofitable is one of the characteristics of genius; it is their patent of nobility.
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.
What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has.... . What a man is in himself, what accompanies him when he is alone, what no one can give him or take away, is obviously more essential to him than everything he has in the way of possessions, or even what he may be in the eyes of the world.
The more a man finds his sources of pleasure in himself, the happier he will be.... The highest, most varied and lasting pleasures are those of the mind.
Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.
Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.
Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.
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.
Every man takes the limits of his field of vision for the limits of the world.
Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.
Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature. A child under the age of fifteen should confine its attention either to subjects like mathematics, in which errors of judgment are impossible, or to subjects in which they are not very dangerous, like languages, natural science, history, etc.
Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an abstract satisfaction of all.
Do not shorten the morning by getting up late; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred.
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. It is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to do.
Every parting gives a foretaste of death;...
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 philistine.
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
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.
He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
Great minds are like eagles, and build their nest in some lofty solitude.
Ordinary people merely think how they shall spend their time; a man of talent tries to use it.
Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, thinks itself much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that are more remote.
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.
Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!
To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.
There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.
Every nation ridicules other nations and all are right.
Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.
The progress of life shows a man the stuff of which he is made.
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