Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions.

To be boosted by an illusion is not to live better than to live in harmony with the truth ... these refusals to part with a decayed illusion are really an infection to the mind.

A musical education is necessary for musical judgement. What most people relish is hardly music; it is rather a drowsy reverie relieved by nervous thrills.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colours of life in all their purity.

It is the acme of life to understand life.

The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family.

The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.