One can forget everything, everything, only not oneself, one's own being.

I owe what is best in my own development to the impression made by Kant's works, the sacred writings of the Hindus, and Plato.

The general history of art and literature shows that the highest achievements of the human mind are, as a rule, not favourably received at first.

All our wanting comes from needs, thus we continiously suffer. The intellect teaches free will, free from suffering.

Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.

Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.

As the strata of the earth preserve in succession the living creatures of past epochs, so the shelves of libraries preserve in succession the errors of the past and their expositions, which like the former were very lively and made a great commotion in their own age but now stand petrified and stiff in a place where only the literary palaeontologist regards them.