Many books serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up...
Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.
Reasonable and vicious are quite consistent with each other, in fact, only through their union are great and far-reaching crimes possible.
To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake.
We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.
The problem with Germans is that they look in the clouds for what lies at their feet.
Every original idea is first ridiculed, then vigorously attacked, and finally taken for granted.
That arithmetic is the basest of all mental activities is proved by the fact that it is the only one that can be accomplished by a machine.
A man must have grown old and lived long in order to see how short life is.
National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.
JedeTrennung gibt einenVorgeschmack desTodesund jedes Wiedersehen einenVorgeschmack der Auferstehung. Every parting is a foretaste of death, and every reunion a foretaste of resurrection.
Authority and example lead the world.
A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities.
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
The word of man is the most durable of all material.
Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.
Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.
We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.
We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves and those who think through others. The latter are the rule and the former the exception. The first are original thinkers in a double sense, and egotists in the noblest meaning of the word.
Console yourself by remembering that the world doesn’t deserve your affection.