“Kant’s style is so heavy that after his pure reason, the reader longs for unreasonableness.”

Worry is the stomach’s worst poison.

I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English.

A recluse without books and ink is already in life a dead man.

The savants will write excellent volumes. There will be laureates. But wars will continue just the same until the forces of the circumstances render them impossible.

If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.

Contentment is the only real wealth.

I am a misanthrope yet utterly benevolent.

My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.

The only true solution would be a convention under which all the governments would bind themselves to defend collectively any country that was attacked.

Lying is the greatest of all sins.

Nature is man’s teacher. She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence.

For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.

One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis of all human knowledge.

It is not sufficient to be worthy of respect in order to be respected.

I am a misanthrope and yet utterly benevolent, have more than one screw loose yet am a super-idealist who digests philosophy more efficiently than food.

It is my express wish that in awarding the [Nobel Prizes] no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.

Sorry to a heavy heart in the morning; sorry to waking up and being yourself the only reason to cry.

This world will get heavy; stay unshaken in pursuit of the light.

And when it feels too heavy to go on being you, lose a bit of yourself in me.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

When things get too heavy, just call me helium, the lightest known gas to man.

Why is it so heavy to feel nothing.

You are a golden thing in this heavy, heavy world.

No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.