At the beginning of a marriage ask yourself whether this woman will be interesting to talk to from now until old age. Everything else in marriage is transitory: most of the time is spent in conversation.

If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event - and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.

We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live - by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody could now endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The conditions of life might include error.

In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that you must have long legs

It is only possible through the fact that sympathy for the general life and suffering of mankind is very weakly developed in the individual.

The disappointed one speaks. I searched for great human beings; I always found only the apes of their ideals.

One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.