Life is hard to bear: but do not affect to be so delicate! We are all of us fine sumpter asses and assesses.

All of life is a dispute over taste and tasting.

Insects sting, not from malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with critics; they desire our blood not our pain.

We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.

In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.

The refinement of morality increases together with the refinement of fear. Today the fear of disagreeable feelings in other people is almost the strongest of our own disagreeable feelings.

It seems to me that to take a book of mine into his hands is one of the rarest distinctions that anyone can confer upon himself. I even assume that he removes his shoes when he does so-not to speak of boots.