Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful toneis silenced.

Metaphysics must be based on what exists, for it has the task of explicating it.

Mankind is getting smarter every day. Actually, it only seems so. At least we are making progress. We're progressing, to be sure, ever more deeply into the forest.

In order to succeed in a profession, a person not only needs to have its good, but also its bad qualities. The former are the spirit, the latter is the body of the job.

To enlist the support of the people and of parliament, you only have to propose a profitable villainy.

Man lives two lives, woe, were it otherwise! One is seized by death, the other one, his honor, remains.

Human life, old and young, takes place between hope and remembrance. The young man sees all the gates to his desires open, and the old man remembers--his hopes.