Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.

(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.

To read a book is to hold an entire world in the palm of your hand. That world is unique to you; no two readers can ever inhabit the same world

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear.

A hedge between keeps friendship green.