Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by easure, with insignificant variations.
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 nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Every human perfection is allied to a defect into which it threatens to pass; but it is also true that every defect is allied to a perfection.
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.
Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.
Compassion is the basis of morality.
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots!
All religions promise a reward beyond this life in eternity for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head, of the understanding.
A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles, for then he is off his guard.