However, for the man who studies to gain , books and studies are merely rungs of the ladder on which he climbs to the summit of knowledge. As soon as a rung has raised him up one step, he leaves it be...
But he will fear least to become nothing in death who has recognized that he is already nothing now, and who consequently no longer takes any share in his individual phenomenon, because in him knowled...
Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are by their very nature highly uncertain precarious ephemeral and subject to chan...
If you want to know your true opinion of someone watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.
Not to go to the theatre is like making one's toilet without a mirror.
Education stuffs you full of ideas without the coinciding experience that gave rise to those ideas in the first place, giving you incorrect perspective and notions.
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
There are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?
To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.
In savage countries they eat one another, in civilized they deceive one another; and that is what people call the way of the world!
In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a bles...
If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang them...
For the more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people,—the less, indeed, other people can be to him. This is why a high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial. True,
A last trick is to become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand. In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack on the...
To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.
We should comport ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with exalted personages - stand quietly before them and wait till they speak to us.
Vladimir Kush , Shell Bronze , Lovers Entwined (painting)Why, then, does the man in love hang with complete abandon on the eyes of his chosen one, and is ready to make every sacrifice for her? Because...
To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it.
Therefore the man of genius requires imagination, in order to see in things not what nature has actually formed, but what she endeavoured to form, yet did not bring about, because of the conflict of h...