Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to activity: just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which it can leap from the precipice, and yet remain what it is; or again, rise high in the air as a fountain. When water is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth contained in it.

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

Apart from man, no being wonders at its own experience.

The Universe is a dream dreamed by a single dreamer where all the dream characters dream too.

We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor.