Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.

A man may call to mind the face of his friend, but not his own. Here, then, is an initial difficulty in the way of applying the maxim, Know Thyself.

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

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is.

The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.

A man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with mast and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.