Certain people really care about nothing that does not affect them personally. True and striking observations; fine, subtle, and witty things are lost upon them. They cannot understand or feel them. But anything that disturbs their petty vanity in the most remote and indirect way, or reflects prejudicially upon their…

It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer.

While illusion distorts reality for a moment, error can reign for a millennia in abstractions, throw its iron yoke over whole peoples, and stifle the noblest impulses of humanity. Those it cannot deceive are left in chains by those it has, by its slaves.

There is nothing to be got in the world anywhere. Privation and pain pervade it, and boredom lies in wait at every corner for those who have escaped them. Moreover, wickedness usually reigns, and folly does all the talking.

If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary.

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books. Bad books are intellectual poison. They destroy the mind.

As Goethe said, I thank God that I am not young in so thoroughly finished a world.

We have dreams; may not our whole life be a dream? Or, more exactly, is there a sure criterion of the distinction between dreams and reality? Between phantasms and real objects? The assertion that what is dreamt is less vivid and distinct than what we actually perceive is not to the point, because no one has ever been…

It looks as if the Blessed Lord hath created the world for the benefit of the devil. It would have been so much better not to have made it at all.

In this world, where the game is played with loaded dice, a man must have a temper of iron, with armor proof to the blows of fate, and weapons to make his way against men.

There are some people whose faces bear the stamp of such artless vulgarity and baseness of character, such an animal limitation of intelligence, that one wonders how they can appear in public with such a countenance, instead of wearing a mask. There are faces, indeed, the very sight of which produces a feeling of…

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs. He is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

Rich men who are ignorant live for their lusts only, and are like the beasts of the field; as may be seen every day: and they can also be reproached for not having used wealth and leisure for that which gives them their greatest value.

Noise is a torture to intellectual people. The general toleration of unnecessary noise is direct evidence that the prevailing habit of mind is dullness and lack of thought.

Other people's heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat.

Patriotism is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

There are two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject’s sake, and those who write for writing’s sake. The first kind have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, while the second kind need money and consequently write for money.

Where you have masses of people of crude susceptibilities and clumsy intelligence, sordid in their pursuits and sunk in drudgery, religion provides the only means of proclaiming and making them feel the hight import of life.

If egoism has a firm hold of a man and masters him, whether it be in the form of joy, or triumph, or lust, or hope, or frantic grief, or annoyance, or anger, or fear, or suspicion, or passion of any kind—he is in the devil's clutches and how he got into them does not matter.