Necessity is the constant scourge of the lower classes, ennui of the higher ones.

I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow.

The vanity of existence is revealed in the whole form existence assumes: in the infiniteness of time and space contrasted with the finiteness of the individual in both; in the fleeting present as the sole form in which actuality exists; in the contingency and relativity of all things; in continual becoming without being; in continual desire without satisfaction; in the continual frustration of striving of which life consists. . . Time is that by virtue of which everything becomes nothingness in our hands and loses all real value.

The actual life of a thought lasts only until it reaches the point of speech...As soon as our thinking has found words it ceases to be sincere...When it begins to exist in others it ceases to live in us, just as the child severs itself from its mother when it enters into its own existence.

Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read directly in the book of the world.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts.