Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite; more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility.
It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.
Truth is a jewel which should not be painted over; but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light.
Life is judged with all the blindness of life itself.
Animals are born and bred in litters. Solitude grows blessed and peaceful only in old age.
Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic Christendom – picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode – may be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair.
Most men’s conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.
It is true that I am carrying out various methods of treatment recommended by doctors and dentists in the hope of dying in the remote future in perfect health.
Unmitigated seriousness is always out of place in human affairs.
Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention.
Music is essentially useless, as life is; but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.
To drink in the spirit of a place you should be not only alone but unhurried.
One real world is enough.
Our occasional madness is less wonderful than our occasional sanity.
In this world we must either institute conventional forms of expression or else pretend that we have nothing to express; the choice lies between a mask and a figleaf.
To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language.
In unphilosophical minds any rare or unexpected thing excites wonder, while in philosophical minds the familiar excites wonder also.
The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour.
Those who cannot remember the pastare condemned to repeat it. or: Those who have never heard of good system development practice are condemned to reinvent it.
To be an American is of itself almost a moral condition, an education, and a career.