A happy life is impos­si­ble; the best that a man can attain is a heroic life.

Our moral virtues benefit mainly other people; intellectual virtues, on the other hand, benefit primarily ourselves; therefore the former make us universally popular, the latter unpopular.

The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.

There is a wide difference between the original thinker and the merely learned man.

For the purpose of acquiring gain, everything else is pushed aside or thrown overboard, for example, as is philosophy by the professors of philosophy.

Boredom is an evil that is not to be estimated lightly. It can come in the end to real despair. The public authority takes precautions against it everywhere, as against other universal calamities.

Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.