Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills.

If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature.

We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

Music is the answer to the mystery of life. The most profound of all the arts, It expresses the deepest thoughts of life.

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake.