The fly ought to be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity; for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else, and run away even before he comes near them, the fly lights upon his very nose.

... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them. (Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)

Mostly the loss teaches us only about the value of things.

If anyone spends almost the whole day in reading...he gradually loses the capacity for thinking...This is the case with many learned persons; they have read themselves stupid

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

In many cases hate a person is rooted in the involuntary estimate of its virtues.

Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.