Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.

Art is the great stimulus to life.

Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.

Only you must have worthy foes hate, but not enemies worthy of contempt. You must be proud of your enemy.

We criticize a man or a book most sharply when we sketch out their ideal.

The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.

Fathers have a lot to do to make up for having sons.