“Money is human happiness in the abstract; and so the man who is no longer capable of enjoying such happiness in the concrete, sets his whole heart on money.”

“The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.”

“What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.”

“A man who has not enough originality to think out a new title for his book will be much less capable of giving it new contents.”

“The true basis and propaedeutic for all knowledge of human nature is the persuasion that a man's actions are, essentially and as a whole, not directed by his reason and its designs; so that no one becomes this or that because he wants to, though he want to never so much, but that his conduct proceeds from his inborn and inalterable character, is narrowly and in particulars determined by motivation, and is thus necessarily the product of these two factors.”

“Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure”

“Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”