A man of genius can hardly be sociable, for what dialogues could indeed be so intelligent and entertaining as his own monologues?
There is not a grain of dust, not an atom that can become nothing, yet man believes that death is the annhilation of his being.
If there is anything in the world that can really be called a mans property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.
Not to go to the theater is like making one’s toilet without a mirror.
Every genius is a great child; he gazes out at the world as something strange, a spectacle, and therefore with purely objective interest.
Man shows his character best in trifles.
For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms; they shine only when it is dark.
That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject.
The greatest intellectual capacities are only found in connection with a vehement and passionate will.
Necessity is the constant scourge of the lower classes, ennui of the higher ones.
A man of correct insight among those who are duped and deluded resembles one whose watch is right while all the clocks in the town give the wrong time.
Every human perfection is linked to an error which it threatens to turn into.
A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.
To repeat abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts the whole inner nature of the world, and thus to deposit it as a reflected image in permanent concepts always ready for the faculty of reason, this and nothing else is philosophy.
Das Ganze der Erfahrung gleicht einer Geheimschrift und die Philosophie der Entzifferung derselben. The whole of experience is like a cryptograph, and philosophy is like the deciphering of it.
A man may call to mind the face of his friend, but not his own. Here, then, is an initial difficulty in the way of applying the maxim, Know Thyself.
Sleep is to a man what winding up is to a clock.
Women remain children all their lives, for they always see only what is near at hand, cling to the present, take the appearance of a thing for reality, and prefer trifling matters to the most important.
There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject’s sake, and those who write for writing’s sake.
Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, thinks itself much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that are more remote.