Born on February 22nd

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."

"Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies."

"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."

"A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free."

"The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness."

"Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax."

"Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people."

"The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity."

"Compassion is the basis of morality."

"Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life."

"They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person."

"The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite."

"We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people."

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

"Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own."

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

"Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point."

"With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy."

"In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties."

"Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection."

"A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants."

"The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom."

"To live alone is the fate of all great souls."

"Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame."

"Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money."

"Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right."

"Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors."

"Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal."

"Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another."