Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them.

History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below.

The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.

There are two things for which animals are to be envied: they know nothing of future evils, or of what people say about them.

Come! you presence will either give me life or kill me with pleasure.

Now, you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your will....The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated.

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.