To truth only a brief celebration of victory is allowed between the two long periods during which it is condemned as paradoxical, or disparaged as trivial.

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.

Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.

It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them.

If the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly-nay, they would go mad. And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.