“Death is not an evil, because it frees us from all evils, and while it takes away good things, it takes away also the desire for them. Old age is the supreme evil, because it deprives us of all pleasures, leaving us only the appetite for them, and it brings with it all sufferings. Nevertheless, we fear death, and we desire old age.”

“No one is so completely disenchanted with the world, or knows it so thoroughly, or is so utterly disgusted with it, that when it begins to smile upon him he does not become partially reconciled to it.”

“Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.”

“It's not our disadvantages or shortcomings that are ridiculous but rather the studious way we try to hide them and our desire to act as if they did not exist.”

“People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.”

“In all climates under all skies man's happiness is always somewhere else.”

“I get up and I bless the light thin clouds and the first twittering of birds and the breathing air and smiling face of the hills.”

“You can be happy indeed if you have breathing space from pain.”

“The end of pain we take as happiness.”

“He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much the master of the world as he who is ready to die.”

“Seated here in contemplations lost, my thought discovers vaster space beyond, supernal silence and unfathomed peace”