If there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god? Therefore there are no gods.

Did you ever say yes to a pleasure? oh my friends, then you also said yes to all pain. all things are linked, entwined, in love with one another.

What is originality? To see something that has no name as yet and hence cannot be mentioned although it stares us all in the face. The way men usually are, it takes a name to make something visible for them.

Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can assume great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.

We must beware of one who is in a passion against us as of one who has once sought our life; for the fact that we still live is due to the absence of power to kill, - if looks could kill, we should have been dead long ago.

Growth in wisdom can be measured precisely by decline in bile.

Human existence basically is──a never to be completed imperfect tense.