If you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an amount of misery, pain and suffering of every kind the sun shines upon in its course, you will admit that it would be much better if, on the earth as little as on the moon, the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and if, here as there, the surface…

A young man of a rich family enters upon life with a large patrimony, and often runs through it in an incredibly short space of time, in vicious extravagance; and why? Simply because, here too, the mind is empty and void, and so the man is bored with existence.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are its tormented souls.

Occasionally it happens that some slight but constant noise continues to bother and distract me for a time before I become distinctly conscious of it. All I feel is a steady increase in the labor of thinking, just as though I were trying to walk with a weight on my foot.

In the ordinary man, injustice rouses a passionate desire for vengeance, and it has often been said that vengeance is sweet. How many sacrifices have been made just to enjoy the feeling of vengeance, without any intention of causing an amount of injury equivalent to what one has suffered?

No one can live among men without feeling drawn again and again to the tempting supposition that moral baseness and intellectual incapacity are closely connected, as though they both sprang directly from one source.

To a man possessed of an ill-conditioned individuality, all pleasure is like delicate wine in a mouth made bitter with gall.

Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

Religion must be regarded as a necessary evil, its necessity resting on the pitiful imbecility of the great majority of mankind, incapable of grasping the truth, and therefore requiring, in its pressing need, something to take its place.

The fanatical enormities perpetrated in the name of religion are only to be put down to the adherents of monotheistic creeds — that is, the Jewish faith and its two branches, Christianity and Islamism.

We often try to banish the gloom and despondency of the present by speculating upon our chances of success in the future.

This is why Aristotle says: It is not wealth, but character that lasts.

This world is so arranged as to be able to maintain itself with great difficulty. But if it were a little worse, it could no longer maintain itself. Consequently, a worse world, since it could not continue to exist, is absolutely impossible. Thus, this world itself is the worst of all possible worlds.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

You've no notion how stupid most people are.

It is only to monotheism that intolerance is essential. An only god is, by his nature, a jealous god, who can allow no other god to exist.

No doubt it is true that in the machinery of the State, the freedom of the press performs the same function as a safety-valve in other machinery, for it enables all discontent to find a voice. In doing so, the discontent exhausts itself if it has not much substance; and if it has, there is an advantage in recognising…

The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

Being right in itself is powerless; in nature it is Might that rules. To enlist might on the side of right, so that by means of it right may rule, is the problem of statesmanship.