In certain countries, people seem to be think that three asses together make one intelligent person. However, that is completely wrong. Several asses in concreto make the ass in abstracto and that is a most terrifying animal.
Right and proof are two crutches for everything bent and crooked that limps along.
The courts used to be, fair and square, the avengers of secular crimes; but nowadays they demand respect even for the criminal.
Finally and long overdue, your people, oppressed and disgraced by hatred and maliciousness, have achieved justice: now you enjoy full citizen’s rights, but you’ll remain Jews nonetheless.
He who takes people for smart pays an expensive lesson.
It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.
Disregard for the consequences and for right and wrong nowadays passes as energy.
The military and the clergy cause us much annoyance; the clergy and the military, they empty our wallets and rob our intelligence.
What a pathetic creature is man! His senses are awakened by the hope for the very thing whose consummation puts him to sleep.
In order to succeed in a profession, a person not only needs to have its good, but also its bad qualities. The former are the spirit, the latter is the body of the job.
The ramparts of Vienna are crumbling into the sand; no one wants to live so confined, however, the entire country is already surrounded by a Chinese wall!
Compilers resemble gluttonous eaters who devour excessive quantities of healthy food just to excrete them as refuse.
A pious woman’s neighbor, a philanthropist’s child, a liberal’s servant – these three have a hard life.
Only by himself, with one acre and a house, will a dunce be a dunce. Once he manages to gain power, he’ll turn into a scoundrel.
Piety is the fermentation of the forming mind and the putrefaction of the disintegrating one.
Reason and the ability to use it are two separate skills.
A cure by regression is homeopathic, like healing the damage done by ministers and ignorance with stupidity and Jesuits.
I understand the phrase “Honor the Women” all too well: the poet has probably a wife of his own, but he prefers to honor another.
Servants honor their master by their service.
Trousers and the reputation of not being a thief are similar in the following way: There is no particular honor in having them butonce they are lost, everyone thinks they have the right to insult us.