Pride works _from within_; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.

There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity. All young people should be taught now to put up with loneliness ... because the less man is compelled to come into contact with others, the better off he is.

Life is a constant process of dying.

Authors may be divided into falling stars, planets, and fixed stars: the first have a momentary effect; the second have a much longer duration; but the third are unchangeable, possess their own light, and work for all time.

The vanity of existence is revealed in the whole form existence assumes: in the infiniteness of time and space contrasted with the finiteness of the individual in both; in the fleeting present as the sole form in which actuality exists; in the contingency and relativity of all things; in continual becoming without being; in continual desire without satisfaction; in the continual frustration of striving of which life consists. . . Time is that by virtue of which everything becomes nothingness in our hands and loses all real value.

Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read directly in the book of the world.

Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.