...this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways is-nothing.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness hover before us in our dreams, and we search in vain for their original. Much would have been gained if, through timely advice and instruction, young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them.

If you feel irritated by the absurd remarks of two people whose conversation you happen to overhear, you should imagine that you are listening to a dialogue of two fools in a comedy.

Empirical sciences prosecuted purely for their own sake, and without philosophic tendency are like a face without eyes.

No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.