“If death ends all, if I have neither to hope for good to come nor to fear evil, I must ask myself what I am here for and how in these circumstances I must conduct myself. Now the answer to one of these questions is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for living and life has no meaning. We are here, inhabitants for a little while of a small planet, revolving around a minor star which is in turn one of unnumbered galaxies... The astronomer tells us.... this planet will eventually reach a condition when living things can no longer exist upon it and at long last the universe will attain that final state of equilibrium in which nothing more can happen. Aeons and aeons before this man will have disappeared. Is it possible to suppose that it will matter then that he ever existed? He will have been a chapter in the history of the universe as pointless as the chapter in which is written the life stories of the strange creatures that inhabited the primeval earth.”

“The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.”

“Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it’s a mistake to make a habit of it.”

“How strange was the relation between parents and children! When they were small the parents doted on them, passed through agonies of apprehension at each childish ailment, and the children clung to their parents with love and adoration; a few years passed, the children grew up, and persons not of their kin were more important to their happiness than father or mother. Indifference displaced the blind and instinctive love of the past. Their meetings were a source of boredom and irritation. Distracted once at the thought of a month's separation they were able now to look forward with equanimity to being parted for years.”

“The most difficult thing for a wise woman to do is to pretend to be a foolish one.”

“Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too. ”

“The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.”

“Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.”

“The crown of literature is poetry.”

“The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.”

“Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.”