It’s in the very trickery that it pleases me. But show me how the trick is done, and I have lost my interest therein.

The law of the pleasure in having done anything for another is, that the one almost immediately forgets having given, and the other remembers eternally having received.

However wretched a fellow-mortal may be, he is still a member of our common species.

Not a soul takes thought how well he may live- only how long: yet a good life might be everybody's, a long one can be nobody's.

As fate is inexorable, and not to be moved either with tears or reproaches, an excess of sorrow is as foolish as profuse laughter; while, on the other hand, not to mourn at all is insensibility.

The best cure for anger is delay.

Every guilty person is his own hangman.