Night gives a black look to everything, whatever it may be.

He who can see truly in the midst of general infatuation is like a man whose watch keeps good time, when all clocks in the town in which he lives are wrong. He alone knows the right time; what use is that to him?

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

In reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another's thoughts.

The man who sees two or three generations is like one who sits in the conjuror's booth at a fair, and sees the same tricks two or three times. They are meant to be seen only once.

A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes.