Politics is concerned with herds rather than with individuals, and the passions which are important in politics are, therefore, those in which the various members of a given herd can feel alike.

Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.

The first step in wisdom, as well as in morality, is to open the windows of the ego as wide as possible.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

[There has been] every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.