Happiness is pleasure without regret

Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.

To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.

I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again.

But that's just the aim of civilization - to make everything a source of enjoyment.

We live in this world like a child who enters a room where a clever person is speaking. The child did not hear the beginning of the speech, and he leaves before the end; and there are certain things which he hears but does not understand

The main qualities that had earned him this universal respect in the service were, first, an extreme indulgence towards people, based on his awareness of his own shortcomings; second, a perfect liberalism, not the sort he read about in the newspapers, but the sort he had in his blood, which made him treat all people, whatever their rank or status, in a perfectly equal and identical way; and, third - most important - a perfect indifference to the business he was occupied with, owing to which he never got carried away and never made mistakes.