Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a madhouse or prison.

To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man.

Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.

Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?

The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.

Everyone has the same God; only people differ.

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't be cured.