These illustrations suggest four general maxims[...]. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.

If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.

When the journey from means to end is not too long, the means themselves are enjoyed if the end is ardently desired.

Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.

Science, in its ultimate ideal, consists of a set of propositions arranged in a hierarchy, the lowest level of the hierarchy being concerned with particular facts, and the highest with some general law, governing everything in the universe. The various levels in the hierarchy have a two-fold logical connection, travelling one up, one down; the upward connection proceeds by induction, the downward by deduction.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Fundamental happiness depends more than anything else upon what may be called a friendly interest in persons and things.