Genius is to other gifts what the carbuncle is to the precious stones. It sends forth its own light, whereas other stones only reflect borrowed light.

The less one, as a result of objective or subjective conditions, has to come into contact with people, the better off one is for it.

The conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another.

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?

If two men who were friends in their youth meet again when they are old, after being separated for a life-time, the chief feeling they will have at the sight of each other will be one of complete disappointment at life as a whole; because their thoughts will be carried back to that earlier time when life seemed so fair as it lay spread out before them in the rosy light of dawn, promised so much — and then performed so little.

To buy books would be a good thing if we could also buy the time to read them; but the purchase of books is often mistaken for the assimilation and mastering of their contents.

If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.