If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart.

The ordinary method of education is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense of the word, prejudices, on the mind of the child, before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be.

A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.

It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly recall the good time that is now no more; but that in good days, we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of the bad.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

Pride is generally censured and decried, but mainly by those who have nothing to be proud of.

A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name