Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

It is not what things are objectively and in themselves, but what they are for us, in our way of looking at them, that makes us happy or the reverse.

Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, thinks itself much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that are more remote.

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

A happy life is impos­si­ble; the best that a man can attain is a heroic life.

I have described religion as the metaphysics of the people.