To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish

As the strata of the earth preserve in succession the living creatures of past epochs, so the shelves of libraries preserve in succession the errors of the past and their expositions, which like the former were very lively and made a great commotion in their own age but now stand petrified and stiff in a place where only the literary palaeontologist regards them.

Something of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present, in that the latter is a reality, and related to the former as something to nothing.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law.

Man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.