If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

I owe what is best in my own development to the impression made by Kant's works, the sacred writings of the Hindus, and Plato.

A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man

No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.

If people insist that honor is dearer than life itself, what they really mean is that existence and well-being are as nothing compared with other people's opinions. Of course, this may be only an exaggerated way of stating the prosaic truth that reputation, that is, the opinion others have of us, is indispensable if we are to make any progress in the world.

A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one.