If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

A marriage is likely to be called happy if neither party ever expected to get much happiness out of it.

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.

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.

The evolution of our spirit is blazed on the dark background of eternity by our individual wakes. Every person can, if he/she wishes, leave a more or less brilliant wake behind them.