Nature conceals her mystery by her essential grandeur.
The beauty of it is that we have to content ourselves with the recognition of the miracle, beyond which there is no legitimate way out.
Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity.
The world as we see it is only the world as we see it. Others may see it differently.
All means prove but blunt instruments, if they have not behind them a living spirit.
I always found I was in the best of company, alone.
To act intelligently in human affairs is only possible if an attempt is made to understand the thoughts, motives, and apprehension of one’s opponent so fully that one can see the world through their eyes.
In matters of trust and justice there can be no distinction between big problems and small, for the general principles which determine the conduct of men are indivisible. Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.
The great moral teachers of humanity were in a way artistic geniuses in the art of living.
Earnestly I must exert myself in order to return as much as I have received.
The most superior of scientific goals is to embrace a maximum of experiment with a minimum of hypotheses.
Convictions can best be supported with experience and clear thinking.
When we are working at something, we come down from our high logical horse and sniff around with our nose to the ground. Then we obliterate our traces in order to become more God-like.
What good is a reputation not put to good use.
It is easy to say something new, if all senses one will eschew. But hardly ever is found, that the new is also sound.
Long live impudence. It was my guardian angel in this world.
My only refuge, as a serious young man, from the despair of my financial burden to my family, is that I did everything I could to never permit myself any amusements or diversions except those afforded by my studies.
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves. This ethical basis I call the ideal of the pigsty.
While it is true that an inherently free and scrupulous person may be destroyed, such an individual can never be enslaved or used as a blind tool.
But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.