Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.

Perhaps the gods are kind to us, by making life more disagreeable as we grow older. In the end death seems less intolerable than the manifold burdens we carry

An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable requirements for my emotional life; I have always been able to create them anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so closely approached that friend and enemy coincided in the same person.

What good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?

My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection.

Civilization runs a greater risk if we maintain our present attitude to religion than if we give it up.

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.