Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme which we cannot escape.

That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence.

Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself -- in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity -- is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.

We forget our guilt when we have confessed it to another, but the other does not usually forget it.

The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.

For nothing is more democratic than logic; it is no respecter of persons and makes no distinction between crooked and straight noses.

I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.