Whoever considers morality the main objective of human existence, seems to me like a person who defines the purpose of a clock asnot going wrong. The first objective for a clock, is, however, that it does run; not going wrong is an additional regulative function. If not a watch's greatest accomplishment were not going wrong, unwound watches might be the best.

No matter which word it is, when I pronounce repeatedly, it ends up sounding utterly ridiculous and meaningless to me.

Pity, but never love bestows kind words upon the slave.

Our age believed herself pregnant with auspicious progeny, but when her hour came, it turned out to be dropsy.

Why I love the ancients so much? Aside from everything else, when I read them, the entire past between them and me unfolds at thesame time. The hearts of how many heroes and poets may have been set on fire by Plutarch's biographies which now inspire me with their own and with borrowed flames!

Drive the women from the bed just as you drove them from the choir; a eunuch sings in Rome, and the priests masturbate.

Morality, a muzzle for the will; logic, a climbing iron for the mind.