Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If we thought more for ourselves we would have very many more bad books and very many more good ones.
He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.
Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.
Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.
It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple.
One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.
What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears...as easily as we open and shut our eyes.
Imagine the world so greatly magnified that particles of light look like twenty-four-pound cannon balls.
The highest point to which a weak but experienced mind can rise is detecting the weakness of better men.
We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.
If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.
I have never yet met anyone who did not think it was an agreeable sensation to cut tinfoil with scissors.
One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.
To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.
If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.
Honest unaffected distrust of human abilities under all circumstances is the surest sign of strength of mind.
God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.
It is with epigrams as with other inventions; the best ones annoy us because we didn't think of them ourselves.
What we have to discover for ourselves leaves behind in our mind a pathway that can be used on another occasion.
We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.
An hour-glass is a reminder not only of time's quick flight, but also of the dust to which we must at last return
If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.
Everyone should study at least enough philosophy and belles-lettres to make his sexual experience more delectable.
He marvelled at the fact that the cats had two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes were.
If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.
Great men too make mistakes, and many among them do it so often that one is almost tempted to call them little men.
Just as there are polysyllabic words that say very little, so there are also monosyllabic words of infinite meaning.
Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner.
If an angel were to tell us about his philosophy, I believe many of his statements might well sound like '2 x 2= 13'.
I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up.
I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.
With God thoughts are colors, with us they are pigments-even the most abstract one may be accompanied by physical pain.
Truly, men make too little use of their lives; and so it is no wonder that the world should still be in such a poor way.
He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.
That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.
Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.
Is it not strange that mankind should so willingly battle for religion and so unwillingly live according to its precepts?
How happily some people would live if they troubled themselves as little about other people's business as about their own.
The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
What you have been obliged to discover by yourself leaves a path in your mind which you can use again when the need arises.
A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.
Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.
Everyone is perfectly willing to learn from unpleasant experience - if only the damage of the first lesson could be repaired.
Many a man who is willing to be shot for his belief in a miracle would have doubted, had he been present at the miracle itself.
Every condition of the soul has its own sign and expression...So you will see how hard it is to seem original without being so.
Many are less fortunate than you' may not be a roof to live under, but it will serve to retire beneath in the event of a shower.
Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers.