"Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right."

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

"Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence with the certainty of losing it at last."

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

"Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority."

"How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action?"

"Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness."

"We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness."

"Men are like children, in that, if you spoil them, they become naughty. Therefore it is well not to be too indulgent or charitable with anyone. You may take it as a general rule that you will not lose a friend by refusing him a loan, but that you are very likely to do so by granting it; and, for similar reasons, you will not readily alienate people by being somewhat proud and careless in your behavior; but if you are very kind and complaisant towards them, you will often make them arrogant and intolerable, and so a breach will ensue."

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

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

Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανατου μελετη (thanatou meletē—the practice or study of death). Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise."

"Let us see rather that like Janus-or better, like Yama, the Brahmin god of death-religion has two faces, one very friendly, one very gloomy..."

"Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions."

"For whence did Dante get the material for his hell, if not from this actual world of ours? And indeed he made a downright hell of it."

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

"Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed."

"Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point."

"(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 subject of reproach."

"Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money."

"Not to go to the theatre is like making one's toilet without a mirror."

"We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success."

"Life presents itself as a continual deception, in small matters as well as in great. If it has promised, it does not keep its word, unless to show how little desirable the desired object was; hence we are deluded now by hope, now by what was hoped for. If it has given, it did so in order to take. The enchantment of distance shows us paradises that vanish like optical illusions, when we have allowed ourselves to be fooled by them. Accordingly, happiness lies always in the future, or else in the past, and the present may be compared to a small dark cloud driven by the wind over the sunny plain; in front of and behind the cloud everything is bright, only it itself always casts a shadow. Consequently, the present is always inadequate, but the future is uncertain, and the past irrecoverable."

"Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced."