If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner...if I let it slip from my tongue, I am ITS prisoner.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

That human life must be some kind of mistake is sufficiently proved by the simple observation that man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy; that their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only given over to boredom . . .

A man of business will often deceive you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely refuse to commit a theft.

The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father the former has intellect; the latter genius, which itself is a kind of luxury.

A man of correct insight among those who are duped and deluded resembles one whose watch is right while all the clocks in the town give the wrong time.