If you want to discover your true opinion of anybody, observe the impression made on you by the first sight of a letter from him.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.

If we suspect that a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him; for then he becomes bold and assured, lies more vigorously, and is unmasked.

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.

Pride is generally censured and decried, but mainly by those who have nothing to be proud of.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

When a man reaches a condition in which he believes a thing must happen because he does not wish it, and what he wishes to happen can never be, this is called desperation.

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.