Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction.

It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

Many books serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up.

There is no vice of which a man can be guilty, no meanness, no shabbiness, no unkindness, which excites so much indignation among his contemporaries, friends and neighbours, as his success. This is the one unpardonable crime, which reason cannot defend, nor humility mitigate.

Patriotism is the passion of fools and the most foolish of passions.

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.