The most solid pleasure in this life is the empty pleasure of illusion.

He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die.

The world laughs at things it would really prefer to admire, and like Aesop's fox it criticizes things it covets.

Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything.

The thought that really crushes us is the thought of the futility of life of which death is the visible manifestation.

The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one s own knowledge is not to overstep them.

I find it awfully difficult to determine if the habit of talking about oneself at length runs contrary to the basic rules of propriety, or if instead the man exempt from this vice is rare.