It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.
To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.
The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.
Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage.
Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.
Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.
To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.
The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.
The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.
In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.
Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
Compassion is the basis of morality.
It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.
If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.
Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.
Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.
Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.
The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
