Our civilized world is nothing but a great masquerade. You encounter knights, parsons, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and a thousand more: but they are not what they appear - they are merely masks... Usually, as I say, there is nothing but industrialists, businessmen and speculators concealed behind all these masks.

The fourfold root of the principle of sufficent reason is "Anything perceived has a cause. All conclusions have premises. All effects have causes. All actions have motives.

Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is.

Patriotism is the passion of fools and the most foolish of passions.

What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles.