How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action?

A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name

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.

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

To gain anything we have longed for is only to discover how vain and empty it is; and even though we are always living in expectation of better things, at the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again.

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.

Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing us the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, does it not tell us what the future will be?