If a man sets out to hate all the miserable creatures he meets, he will not have much energy left for anything else; whereas he can despise them, one and all, with the greatest ease.

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.

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.

It is only the hope of what is claimed that begets and nurishes the wish.

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.

You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.

In the blessings as well as in the ills of life, less depends upon what befalls us than upon the way in which it is met.