The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason.

Jealous is every virtue of the others, and a dreadful thing is jealousy. Even virtues may succumb by jealousy.

A friend whose hopes we cannot satisfy is a friend we would rather have as an enemy.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

Beware in the presence of cats: they never give, they do not even retaliate--they only reply, and purr in doing so.

Whoever has not two-thirds of his time to himself, is a slave.

Posthumous men-myself, for example-are not as well understood as timely ones, but we are listened to better. More precisely: we are never understood-hence our authority.