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

Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature. A child under the age of fifteen should confine its attention either to subjects like mathematics, in which errors of judgment are impossible, or to subjects in which they are not very dangerous, like languages, natural science, history, etc.

The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough mosaic. Looked at close, they produce no effect. There is nothing beautiful to be found in them, unless you stand some distance off.

That arithmetic is the basest of all mental activities is proved by the fact that it is the only one that can be accomplished by a machine.

Just as a stream flows smoothly on as long as it encounters no obstruction, so the nature of man and animal is such that we never really notice or become conscious of what is agreeable to our will; if we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted, has to have experienced a shock of some kind.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

What now on the other hand makes people sociable is their incapacity to endure solitude and thus themselves.