It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled in them, and each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness.

We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.

I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.

Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.

It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind.

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.