With people of only moderate ability modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that only a madman could be guiltyof it, and other insipidities of the sam kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark 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.
There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of training, because it trains people in the way they shall thing: and, as is well known, you cannot begin the process too early.
Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it an remain at rest.
Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.
Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.
In our part of the world where monogamy is the rule, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.
Hatred comes from the heart, contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.
Every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence.
Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.