If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.
Contentment is the only real wealth.
Home is where I work, and I work everywhere.
The truthful man is usually a liar.
Hope is nature's veil for hiding truth's nakedness.
I intend to leave after my death a large fund for the promotion of the peace idea, but I am skeptical as to its results.
I am a misanthrope and yet utterly benevolent, have more than one screw loose yet am a super-idealist who digests philosophy more efficiently than food.
One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis of all human knowledge.
Good wishes alone will not ensure peace.
On the day when two army corps may mutually annihilate each other in a second, probably all civilized nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops.
A recluse without books and ink is already in life a dead man.
It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.
A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion.
Second to agriculture, humbug is the biggest industry of our age.
Justice is to be found only in imagination.
Lying is the greatest of all sins.
Lawyers have to make a living, and can only do so by inducing people to believe that a straight line is crooked.
For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.
The first time I saw nitroglycerine was in the beginning of the Crimean War. Professor Zinin in St. Petersburg exhibited some to my father and me, and struck some on an anvil to show that only the part touched by the hammer exploded without spreading.
I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English.
