Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets you fancy that on the horizon heaven and earth meet.

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

All our wanting comes from needs, thus we continiously suffer. The intellect teaches free will, free from suffering.

The scenes and events of long ago, and the persons who took part in them, wear a charming aspect to the eye of memory, which sees only the outlines and takes no note of disagreeable details. The present enjoys no such advantage, and so it always seems defective.

The vanity of existence is revealed in the whole form existence assumes: in the infiniteness of time and space contrasted with the finiteness of the individual in both; in the fleeting present as the sole form in which actuality exists; in the contingency and relativity of all things; in continual becoming without being; in continual desire without satisfaction; in the continual frustration of striving of which life consists. . . Time is that by virtue of which everything becomes nothingness in our hands and loses all real value.

To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.

The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.