Consciousness is the mere surface of our minds, of which, as of the earth, we do not know the inside, but only the crust.

Whatever folly men commit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise forbearance; remember that when these faults appear in others it is our follies and vices that we behold.

The life of every individual is really always a tragedy, but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy.

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

The eternal being..., as it lives in us, also lives in every animal.

A man's knowledge may be said to be mature, in other words, when it has reached the most complete state of perfection to which he, as an individual, is capable of bringing it, when an exact correspondence is established between the whole of his abstract ideas and the things he has actually perceived for himself. His will mean that each of his abstract ideas rests, directly or indirectly, upon a basis of observation, which alone endows it with any real value; and also that he is able to place every observation he makes under the right abstract idea which belongs to it.

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