Empirical sciences prosecuted purely for their own sake, and without philosophic tendency are like a face without eyes.

The general history of art and literature shows that the highest achievements of the human mind are, as a rule, not favourably received at first.

In many cases hate a person is rooted in the involuntary estimate of its virtues.

In order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute. Hence luxury in all its forms; delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand and one things that he considers necessary to his existence.

Human life, like all inferior goods, is covered on the outside with a false glitter; what suffers always conceals itself.

The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

To expect a man to retain everything that he has ever read is like expecting him to carry about in his body everything that he has ever eaten.