(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects whether moral or intellectual shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.
Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amo...
With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence with the certainty of losing it at last.
If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the miseries of boredom.
Life is a constant process of dying.
I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow.
Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis.
Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced.
The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opi...
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
When you consider how great and immediate is the problem of existence, this ambiguous, tormented, fleeting, dream-like existence - so great and so immediate that as soon as you are aware of it, it ove...
There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. [...] The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of co...
I observed once to Goethe ... that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself and he exists only in your head...
Gaiety alone as it were is the hard cash of happiness everything else is just a promissory note.
Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!