Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.

Want and boredom are indeed the twin poles of human life.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

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 greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms ofthe same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others.

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.