Compassion is the basis of morality.
Truth that is naked is the most beautiful.
It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of so...
To live alone is the fate of all great souls.
There are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?
When we see that almost everything men devote their lives to attain, sparing no effort and encountering a thousand toils and dangers in the process, has, in the end, no further object than to raise th...
There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has th...
The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But...
Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.
Genius lives only one storey above madness
But he will fear least to become nothing in death who has recognized that he is already nothing now, and who consequently no longer takes any share in his individual phenomenon, because in him knowled...
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.
To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.
Hatred comes from the heart contempt from the head and neither feeling is quite within our control.
If you want to know your true opinion of someone watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.
We should comport ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with exalted personages - stand quietly before them and wait till they speak to us.
If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most Ill-adapted to its purpose in the world: for it is absurd to suppose that the endless affliction of whic...
There is an underlying unity in all things
Music is the melody whose text is the world.
Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.