Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

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.

Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.

A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.

Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his reader...

What a miserable thing life is: you're living in clover only the clover isn't good enough.

roads were made for journeys not destinations

I am free in performing an action if I could have done otherwise if I had chosen to.

My favorite piece [piece of music] is the one we hear all the time if we are quiet.

Prosperity inebriates men, so that they take delights in their own merits.

Never put off until tomorrow what you can put off forever.

A poor girl may have an illusion that a prince will come and fetch her home. It is possible, some such cases have occurred. That the Messiah will come and found a golden age is much less probable.

The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus and a chair that's not obtained from Craigslist that keeps poking into his back.