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

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

I intend to leave after my death a large fund for the promotion of the peace idea, but I am skeptical as to its results.

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.

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.

What’s a man’s first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.

Speak briefly and to the point.

Any happiness, no matter how brief, seemed better than the long, simmering torture of waking up day after day, knowing i could never have him.

Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place – service – social service – the ants creed, the bees creed.

I thought, briefly, that I would never feel as intensely connected to the world, to another human being, as I did at that moment.

The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all.

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.

But only a brief moment is granted to the brave one breath or two, whose wage is the long nights of the grave.