We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.

In order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute. Hence luxury in all its forms; delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand and one things that he considers necessary to his existence.

Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes.

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.

The present is the only reality and the only certainty.

I know of no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus of old used in closing: May all that have life be delivered from suffering.

Many undoubtedly owe their good fortune to the circumstance that they possess a pleasing smile with which they win hearts. Yet these hearts would do better to beware and to learn from Hamlet's tables that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.