It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.

Does the thoughtful man suppose that...the present experiment in civilization is the last world we will see?

My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Philosophy is a more intense sort of experience than common life is, just as pure and subtle music, heard in retirement, is something keener and more intense than the howling of storms or the rumble of cities.

Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention.