If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.

Consciousness is the mere surface of our minds, of which, as of the earth, we do not know the inside, but only the crust.

The heavy armor becomes the light dress of childhood; the pain is brief, the joy unending.

For an act to be moral the intention must be based on compassion, not duty. We do something because we want to do it, because we feel we have to do it, not because we ought to do it. And even if our efforts fail - or we never even get to implement them - we are still moral because our motivation was based on compassion.

Want and boredom are indeed the twin poles of human life.

That human life must be some kind of mistake is sufficiently proved by the simple observation that man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy; that their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only given over to boredom . . .

To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish