As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power. You can think about only what you know, so you ought to learn something; on the other hand, you can know only what you have thought about.

Every genius is a great child; he gazes out at the world as something strange, a spectacle, and therefore with purely objective interest

It is most important to allow the brain the full measure of sleep which is required to restore it; for sleep is to a man's whole nature what winding up is to a clock.

To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish

We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.

Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.

Life is full of troubles and vexations, that one must either rise above it by means of corrected thoughts, or leave it.