Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing? That is the question.
The simplest and most familiar truth seems new and wonderful the instant we ourselves experience it for the first time.
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.
There is no shame in preferring happiness.
Men have great pretensions and little schemes.
The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.
Life is short, but boredom makes it longer.
The enlightenment of understanding makes man smarter, but not better.
Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
Time is the notion of 'before and after'.
One cannot imagine how much wit is necessary in order never to seem ridiculous.
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.
Life cannot go on without a great deal of forgetting.
It is a much cleverer thing to talk nonsense than to listen to it.
War is an evil which dishonours mankind.
The real name of happiness is contentment.
If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
Bad shepherds ruin their flocks!
Freedom has been wholly interpreted as a right, as a thing which people are entitled to claim, whereas what it really is above all is an obligation and a duty.
In truth, the path does not matter, the will to achieve is enough.
They became wise too late.
Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.
The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
The secret of being boring is to tell everything.
If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.
Let us hasten to make philosophy popular.
No contingency anywhere in the universe; no indifference; no liberty. While we act, we are, at the same time, acted upon.
We must observe that in each one of us there are two ruling and leading principles, which we follow whithersoever they lead; one is the innate desire for pleasures, the other an acquired opinion which strives for the best. These two sometimes agree within us and are sometimes in strife; and sometimes one, and sometimes the other has the greater power.
Love is not merely a sentiment, it is an art.
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