It is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to do
Our life is a loan received from death with sleep as the daily interest on this loan.
There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.
No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.
The highest, most varied and lasting pleasures are those of the mind.
The tallest oak tree once was an acorn that any pig could have swallowed.
The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
Life without pain has no meaning.
Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.
There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.
Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place.
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.
Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart.
I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.
Compassion is the basis of morality.
Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.
A happy life is impossible; the best that a man can attain is a heroic life.
The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it.
Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.
If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?
Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.
He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
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