One man’s wickedness becomes all men’s curse.

If men had all they wished, they would be often ruined.

And in that instant was born the terrible awareness that life eventually broke every man, but in different ways and at different times.

294. A man's discontent is his worst evill.

Most men make use of the first part of their life to render the last part miserable.

Every man for himself, his own ends, the Devil for all.

The main misfortune, the root of all evil to come, was loss of the confidence in the value of one's own opinion. People imagined that it was out of date of follow their own moral sense, that they must all sing in chorus, and live by other people's notions, notions that were crammed down everybody's throat.

The folly of men, not their hard-heartedness, was the great cause of the world's poverty. It was not the crime of man, nor of any class of men, that made the race so miserable, but a hideous, ghastly mistake, a colossal world-darkening blunder. And then I showed them how four fifths of the labor of men was utterly wasted by the mutual warfare, the lack of organization and concert among the workers.

I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.

We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.

Men were born to die! Life has only one purpose: to understand the sense of your own misery.

At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one.

Thinking aloud is a habit which is responsible for most of mankind's misery.