Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
Never have a companion that casts you in the shade.
The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.
Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life.
I would fain grow old learning many things.
Speak the truth, do not yield to anger give, if thou art asked for little by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods.
I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.
Dreams will get you nowhere, a good kick in the pants will take you a long way.
Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.
The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils for time is the greatest innovator.
What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things.
Without freedom, no art art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.
The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
Only the contemptible fear contempt.
Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.
Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.
Fear of death makes us devoid both of valour and religion. For want of valour is want of religious faith.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.
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