When a man reaches his maturity in understanding and in years, the feeling comes over him that his father was wrong to beget him.

We think that play and fairytales belong to childhood - how shortsighted that is! As though we would want at any time in our life to live without play and fairytales! We give these things other names, to be sure, and feel differently about them, but precisely this is the evidence that they are the same things, for the child too regards play as his work and fairy tales as his truth. The brevity of life ought to preserve us from a pedantic division of life into different stages - as though each brought something new.

Genuine historical knowledge requires nobility of character, a profound understanding of human existence - not detachment and objectivity.

Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of man?

Unconsciously we seek the principles and opinions which are suited to our temperament, so that at last it seems as if these principles and opinions had formed our character and given it support and stability.

To the mediocre, mediocrity is a form of happiness.

Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.