We should comfort ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with exalted personages-stand quietly before them and wait till they speak to us.

If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.

Knowledge is to certain extent a second existence.

Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally.

If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.

The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real project.

Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms ofthe same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others.