First the truth is ridiculed. Then it meets outrage. Then it is said to have been obvious all along.

Solitude will be welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man's personal value is large or small.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

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.

Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.