For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles, for then he is off his guard.

What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness hover before us in our dreams, and we search in vain for their original. Much would have been gained if, through timely advice and instruction, young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them.

Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

The less one, as a result of objective or subjective conditions, has to come into contact with people, the better off one is for it.

The conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another.