“The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.”

If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner, if I let it slip from my tongue, I am Its prisoner.

The world is my idea.

Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced.

Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.

Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

Happiness consists of the frequent repetition of pleasure.

Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.

He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts.

Ordinary people merely think how they shall spend their time; a man of talent tries to use it.

Truth is most beautiful undraped.

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

After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.

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

Treat a work of art like a prince; let it speak to you first.

We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.

I’ve only had two rules. Do all you can and do it the best you can. It’s the only way you ever get that feeling of accomplishing something.

What use are the best of arguments when they can be destroyed by force?

Not doing it is certainly the best way to not getting it.

Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.

Thankfully, in my youth I had the best financial advisor a son could ask for: my dad Walter. When I got that first signing bonus in 1978, Dad took my cheque, announced, ‘This is what we’re going to do,’ and bought an annuity with it.

What I want is to be number one.

No, the best way to stop a vehicle is to shoot the driver. And that you can do with a number of weapons.

Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.