One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and pretty ones to fear.

However much we may feel for the misery of someone close to us, we always act with some artificiality in their presence. We hold-back from telling them everything we think, often because we do not genuinely mean what we say; or because we take a pleasure in their plight, thankful that we are not affected.

Here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master… Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and go? ‘Thou shalt’ is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, ‘I will.

To become wise you have to want to experience certain experiences, and so to run into their open jaws. This is very dangerous, tobe sure; many a "wise man" has been eaten up in doing so.

The free man is a warrior.

Men should learn to live with the same seriousness with which children play.

One pays dearly for being immortal: one must die many times during his life.