Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!

When a man has reached a condition in which he believes that a thing must happen because he does not wish it, and that what he wishes to happen never will be, this is really the state called desperation.

Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.

Ist es an und fu? r sich absurd, das Nichtsein fu? r einUbel zu ? halten; da jedes Ubel wie jedes Gut das Dasein zur Voraussetzung hat, ja sogar das Bewusstsein. It is in and by itself absurd to regard non-existence as an evil; for every evil, like every good, presupposes existence, indeed even consciousness.

To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish

Sexual passion is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious... and consequently the concentration of all desire