Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.

To conceal a want of real ideas, many make for themselves an imposing apparatus of long compound words, intricate flourishes and phrases, new and unheard-of expressions, all of which together furnish an extremely difficult jargon that sounds very learned. Yet with all this they say-precisely nothing.

What people commonly call Fate is, as a general rule, nothing but their own stupid and foolish conduct.

Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life.

Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.

It is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to do

Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts.