What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles.

The happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings. . . . The world in which a person lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he or she looks at it.

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

A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles, for then he is off his guard.

What now on the other hand makes people sociable is their incapacity to endure solitude and thus themselves.

The fourfold root of the principle of sufficent reason is "Anything perceived has a cause. All conclusions have premises. All effects have causes. All actions have motives.

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.