When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: what are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted by what you wish to believe, but look only and surely at what are the facts.

All great books contain boring portions, and all great lives have contained uninteresting stretches.

An individual human existence should be like a river

Diversity is essential to happiness and in Utopia there is hardly any. This is a defect in all planned social systems.

I was told that The Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist.

Our instinctive emotions are those that we have inherited from a much more dangerous world, and contain, therefore, a larger portion of fear than they should.

When I was a child . . . Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.