Pride is an established conviction of one’s own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.

To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.

One man is more concerned with the impression he makes on the rest of mankind, another with the impression the rest of mankind makes on him.

Consciousness is the mere surface of our minds, of which, as of the earth, we do not know the inside, but only the crust.

The actual life of a thought lasts only until it reaches the point of speech...As soon as our thinking has found words it ceases to be sincere...When it begins to exist in others it ceases to live in us, just as the child severs itself from its mother when it enters into its own existence.

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

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