Just as a stream flows smoothly on as long as it encounters no obstruction, so the nature of man and animal is such that we never really notice or become conscious of what is agreeable to our will; if we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted, has to have experienced a shock of some kind.

universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.

The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain… Music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never these themselves.

History is the long, difficult and confused dream of Mankind.

There is only one inborn error. and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy.