A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion.
Contentment is the only real wealth.
For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.
For my part, I wish all guns with their belongings and everything could be sent to hell, which is the proper place for their exhibition and use.
Good wishes alone will not ensure peace.
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 would not leave anything to a man of action as he would be tempted to give up work; on the other hand, I would like to help dreamers as they find it difficult to get on in life.
If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.
Lying is the greatest of all sins.
My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.
Perhaps my factories will put an end to war sooner than your congresses: on the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilized nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops.
Second to agriculture, humbug is the biggest industry of our age.
The savants will write excellent volumes. There will be laureates. But wars will continue just the same until the forces of the circumstances render them impossible.
