Art is the great stimulus to life.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.

You may have enemies whom you hate, but not enemies whom you despise. You must be proud of your enemy: then the success of your enemy shall be your success too.

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.

A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch. Hence it is the greatest paradox in literature, the imperishable in the midst of change, the nourishment which always remains highly valued, as salt does, and never becomes stupid like salt.