It is neither the best nor the worst things in a book that defy translation.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

To one who is accustomed to thinking a lot, every new thought that he hears or reads about immediately appears as a link in a chain.

Every fact and every work exercises a fresh persuasion over every age and every new species of man. History always enunciates new truths.

O sancta simplicitas! What strange simplification and falsification mankind lives on! One can never cease to marvel once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us bright and free and easy and simple! How we have known how to bestow on our senses a passport to everything superficial, on our thoughts a divine desire for wanton gambling and false conclusions! - how we have from the very beginning understood how to retain our ignorance so as to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, frivolity, impetuosity, bravery, cheerfulness of life, so as to enjoy life!

It quite often happens that the old man is subject to the delusion of a great moral renewal and rebirth, and from this experience he passes judgments on the work and course of his life, as if he had only now become clear-sighted; and yet the inspiration behind this feeling of well-being and these confident judgements is not wisdom, but weariness .

Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking.