If a man sets out to hate all the miserable creatures he meets, he will not have much energy left for anything else; whereas he can despise them, one and all, with the greatest ease.

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.

Imagination is strong in a man when that particular function of the brain which enables him to observe is roused to activity without any necessary excitement of the sense. Accordingly, we find that imagination is active just in proportion as our sense are not excited by external objects. A long period of solitude, whether in prison or in a sick room; quiet, twilight, darkness-these are the things that promote its activity; and under their influence it comes into play of itself.

What now on the other hand makes people sociable is their incapacity to endure solitude and thus themselves.

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.

The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts.