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.
Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms ofthe same thing, the essence of which is that a man’s energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others.
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.
A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man’s thoughts and aspirations.
Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest sense of the word; under which are included health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.
It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.
The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.
Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.
No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.
It often happens that we blurt out things that may in some kind of way be harmful to us, but we are silent about things that may make us look ridiculous; because in this case effect follows very quickly on cause.