That is why all great men are modest: they consistently measure themselves not in comparison to other people but to the idea of perfection ever present in their minds, an ideal infinitely clearer and greater than any common people have, and they also realize how far they are from fulfilling their ideal.

If content with himself and mankind, a man is never harsh or curt.

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

Man is doomed either squander his youth, which is the only time he has to store provisions for the coming years and provide for his own well-being, or to spend his youth procuring pleasures in advance for that time of life when he will be too old to enjoy them.

The commonplace expression that life is nothing but a play is verified above all in this: the world speaks absolutely consistently in one way and acts absolutely consistently in another.

Men do not so much hate an evil-doer, or evil itself, as they hate the man who calls evil by its real name.

Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry.