Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say defunctus est; it means that the man has done his task.

At bottom, every state regards another as a gang of robbers who will fall upon it as soon as there is an opportunity.

Man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so.

How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.

In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.

Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself.