To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake

Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough mosaic. Looked at close, they produce no effect. There is nothing beautiful to be found in them, unless you stand some distance off.

Every human perfection is linked to an error which it threatens to turn into

There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

The highest, most varied and lasting pleasures are those of the mind.