Authors may be divided into falling stars, planets, and fixed stars: the first have a momentary effect; the second have a much longer duration; but the third are unchangeable, possess their own light, and work for all time.
The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father the former has intellect; the latter genius, which itself is a kind of luxury.
The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.
Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.
The longer a man’s fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.
Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.
There are three stages in the revelation of truth. The first is to be ridiculed, the second is to be resisted and the third is to be considered self-evident.
One man is more concerned with the impression he makes on the rest of mankind, another with the impression the rest of mankind makes on him.
The man who sees two or three generations is like one who sits in the conjuror’s booth at a fair, and sees the same tricks two or three times. They are meant to be seen only once.
Personal courage is really a very subordinate virtue-a virtue, indeed, in which we are surpassed by the lower animals; or else you would not hear people say, as brave as a lion.
Consciousness is the mere surface of our minds, of which, as of the earth, we do not know the inside, but only the crust.
The beard, being a half-mask, should be forbidden by the police – It is, moreover, as a sexual symbol in the middle of the face, obscene: that is why it pleases women.
Apart from man, no being wonders at its own experience.
A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one.
Pantheism is only a polite form of atheism.
Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.
History is the long, difficult and confused dream of Mankind.
If God made this world, then I would not want to be the God. It is full of misery and distress that it breaks my heart.