“Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.”

“Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.”

“Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!”

“Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.”

“Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.”

“Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.”

“With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.”

“To live alone is the fate of all great souls.”

“It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.”

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

“The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.”