Man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further.

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake.

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

If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart.

To expect a man to retain everything that he has ever read is like expecting him to carry about in his body everything that he has ever eaten.