The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen.
To be alone is the fate of all great minds – a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils.
The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.
Time is that in which all things pass away.
The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.
At bottom, every state regards another as a gang of robbers who will fall upon it as soon as there is an opportunity.
Indeed, intolerance is essential only to monotheism; an only God is by nature a jealous God who will not allow another to live. On the other hand, polytheistic gods are naturally tolerant, they live and let live.
Astrology furnishes a splendid proof of the contemptible subjectivity of men. It refers the course of celestial bodies to the miserable ego: it establishes a connection between the comets in heaven and squabbles and rascalities on earth.
I have described religion as the metaphysics of the people.
The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.
To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.
The ultimate foundation of honor is the conviction that moral character is unalterable: a single bad action implies that future actions of the same kind will, under similar circumstances, also be bad.
Genius is an intellect that has become unfaithful to its destiny.
A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name.
What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.
Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.
To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.
Our moral virtues benefit mainly other people; intellectual virtues, on the other hand, benefit primarily ourselves; therefore the former make us universally popular, the latter unpopular.
Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally.
There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the altar of monogamy?