Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.

The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.

To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake

Many books serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up.

He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone.

Mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of absurdity.

Pride is generally censured and decried, but mainly by those who have nothing to be proud of.