Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.

If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart.

Every truth passes through 3 stages before it is recognized 1)ridicule 2) opposition 3) accepted as self-evident.

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.

The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father the former has intellect; the latter genius, which itself is a kind of luxury.

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.

Necessity is the constant scourge of the lower classes, ennui of the higher ones.