Everybody's friend is nobody's.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be liked by other people.

Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.

Each day is a little life; every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

The first forty years of life furnish the text, the remaining thirty the commentary.

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also find the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every remeeting a foretaste of the resurrection. That is why even people who are indifferent to each other rejoice so much if they meet again after twenty or thirty years of separation.

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but a disruption of thought. Of course, where there is nothing to interrupt, noise will not be so particularly painful.