Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.

Genuine contempt, on the other hand, is the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.

Always to see the general in the particular is the very foundation of genius.

Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes.

A man must have grown old and lived long in order to see how short life is.

To become indignant at [people's] conduct is as foolish as to be angry with a stone because it rolls into your path. And with many people the wisest thing you can do, is to resolve to make use of those whom you cannot alter.

Optimism is not only a false but also a pernicious doctrine, for it presents life as a desirable state and man's happiness as its aim and object. Starting from this, everyone then believes he has the most legitimate claim to happiness and enjoyment. If, as usually happens, these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he suffers an injustice, in fact that he misses the whole point of his existence.