Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.
The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place.
What a person is for himself, what abides with him in his loneliness and isolation, and what no one can give or take away from him, this is obviously more essential for him than everything that he possesses or what he may be in the eyes of others...
For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.
Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.
One should use common words to say uncommon things.
He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
We seldom speak of what we have but often of what we lack.
No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.
Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.
A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.
Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.
It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big.
Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced.
If life – the craving for which is the very essence of our being – were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.
Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.
The Universe is a dream dreamed by a single dreamer where all the dream characters dream too.
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.
In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.