You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

...a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.

To become reconciled to a friend with whom you have broken, is a form of weakness; and you pay the penalty of it when he takes the first opportunity of doing precisely the very thing which brought about the breach.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.