“Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.”

You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.

To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

Take man’s most fantastic invention- God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it.

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.

A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one’s own life.

Language was invented to ask questions.

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.