Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

A man may have strong humanitarian and democratic principles, but if he happens to have been brought up as a bath-taking, shirt-changing lover of fresh air, he will have to overcome certain physical repugnance before he can bring himself to put those principles into practice.

life is short and information endless: nobody has time for everything

I used to think I had no will to power. Now I perceive that I vented it on thoughts, rather than people. Conquering an unknown province of knowledge. Getting the better of a problem. Forcing ideas to associate or come apart. Bullying recalcitrant words to assume a certain pattern. All the fun of being a dictator without any risks and responsibilities.

We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love. Love is a mode of knowledge

Reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays.

On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.