Have patience with the quarrelsomeness of the stupid. It is not easy to comprehend that one does not comprehend.
The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.
Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.
In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew.
Everyone is dragged on by their favorite pleasure.
Ideas, being only accessible to crowds after having assumed a very simple shape, must often undergo the most thoroughgoing transformations to become popular. It is especially when we are dealing with somewhat lofty philosophic or scientific ideas that we see how far-reaching are the modifications they require in order to lower them to the level of the intelligence of crowds.
We call 'happiness' a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy.
We do not always have enough strength to bear the misfortunes of others.
I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.
Don't demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.
Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper, and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.
When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
Language is a system whose parts can and must all be considered in their synchronic solidarity.
The value of just any term is accordingly determined by its environment.
Great souls endure in silence.
A child deserves the maximum respect.
Man is not entirely to blame; it was not he who started history; nor is he entirely innocent, since he continues it.
Reason wishes to give a just decision; anger wishes its decision to be thought just.
History, which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
What history relates is only the long, heavy, confused dream of humanity.
It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions.
A man's nobility is not affected by poverty, as it is by riches.
All fear is imaginary, reality is its antidote.
One cannot judge a life by any less true measure than death.
Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.
It is by playing the man, or the woman well that one helps humanity to exist. And it is necessary: it needs you just as you need it!
Education is not confined to childhood and adolescence. Learning is not limited to the schools. Throughout life, our milieu is our teacher, at once stern and dangerous.
Nothing is more relaxing than accepting what is coming.
Even if everyone agrees, everyone can be wrong.
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