In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

Every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence.

Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.

The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.

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

Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment - a question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to answer. The question is this: What change will death produce in a man's existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.

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