Life is neither to be wept over nor to be laughed at but to be understood.

The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.

Just as a stream flows smoothly on as long as it encounters no obstruction, so the nature of man and animal is such that we never really notice or become conscious of what is agreeable to our will; if we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted, has to have experienced a shock of some kind.

I constantly saw the false and the bad, and finally the absurd and the senseless, standing in universal admiration and honour.

Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.

The young should early be trained to bear being left alone; for it is a source of happiness and peace of mind.

We should be surprised that a matter that generally plays such an important part in the life of man has hitherto been almost entirely disregarded by philosophers, and lies before us as raw and untreated material.