Pride is generally censured and decried, but mainly by those who have nothing to be proud of.

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.

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.

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

Virtue is as little to be acquired by learning as genius; nay, the idea is barren, and is only to be employed as an instrument, in the same way as genius in respect to art. It would be as foolish to expect that our moral and ethical systems would turn out virtuous, noble, and holy beings, as that our aesthetic systems would produce poets, painters, and musicians.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

Music is the answer to the mystery of life. The most profound of all the arts, It expresses the deepest thoughts of life.