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

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

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

A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name

We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.