In a seriously intended intellectual emancipation a person’s mute passions and cravings also hope to find their advantage.
Not to be cowardly when it comes to our own actions! Not to leave them in the lurch! – The sting of conscience is indecent.
The first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about something is usually not our own but only the current one pertaining to our class, position, or parentage; our own opinions seldom swim on the surface.
Illness is a clumsy attempt to arrive at health: we must come to nature’s aid with intellect.
I presume that you are compassionate: to be without pity means to be sick in body and spirit. But one should have spirit in abundance, so as to be permitted to be compassionate! For your pity is detrimental to you and to everyone.
In compassionate men, severity is a virtue.
When somebody dies we usually need reasons for consolation, not so much to alleviate our pain as to excuse ourselves for so readily feeling consoled.
Just as bones, tissues, intestines, and blood vessels are enclosed in a skin that makes it possible to bear the sight of a human being, so the agitations and passions of the soul are wrapped up in vanity: it is the soul’s skin.
Whether a man hides his bad qualities and vices or confesses them openly, his vanity wants to gain an advantage by it in both cases: just note how subtly he distinguishes between those he will hide his bad qualities from and those he will face honestly and candidly.
He who is usually self-sufficient becomes exceptionally vain and keenly alive to fame and praise when he is physically ill. The more he loses himself the more he has to endeavor to regain his position by means of the opinion of others.
For some natures, changing their opinions is just as much a requirement of cleanliness as changing their clothes: for others, however, it is merely a requirement of vanity.
Men who think deeply appear to be comedians in their dealings with others because they always have to feign superficiality in order to be understood.
People press toward the light not in order to see better but in order to shine better. – We are happy to regard the one before whomwe shine as light.
There would be no sunshine in society if the born flatterers, I mean the so-called amiable people, did not bring it in with them.
The purpose of punishment is to improve those who do the punishing – that is the final recourse of those who support punishment.
This mother needs happy, reputable children, and that one needs unhappy ones: otherwise she cannot show her kindness as a mother.
A real fox calls sour not only those grapes that he cannot reach but also those that he has reached and taken away from others.
Impoliteness is frequently the sign of an awkward modesty that loses its head when surprised and hopes to conceal this with rudeness.
Yes, life is a woman!
Men inadvertently comport themselves with nobility when they have grown accustomed to wanting nothing from others and always giving to them.