There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

At bottom, every state regards another as a gang of robbers who will fall upon it as soon as there is an opportunity.

Pantheism is only a polite form of atheism.

The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain… Music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never these themselves.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally.