We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm. And if a handsome woman does not say stupid or horrid things, you at once persuade yourself that she is wonderfully clever and moral.

but that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence.

it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.

The soul is immortal- well then, if I shall always live, I must have lived before, lived for a whole eternity.

The best generals I have known were... stupid or absent-minded men. Not only does a good army commander not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and best human attributes - love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and unjust.

Violence produces only something resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence.