A good man will never suspect his friends of shady actions: this is part of his goodness. A good man will never be suspected by the public of using his goodness to screen villains: this is part of his utility

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

In our complex world, there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative.

All great books contain boring portions, and all great lives have contained uninteresting stretches.

Italy and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

The human heart as modern civilization has made it is more prone to hatred than to friendship. And it is prone to hatred because it is dissatisfied.

Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.

The dictum that human nature cannot be changed is one of those tiresome platitudes that conceal from the ignorant the depths of their own ignorance.

It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit: divorced from it, they remain barren.