The tragedy is that we cannot believe the dogmas of religion and metaphysics if we have the strict methods of truth in heart and head, but on the other hand, we have become through the development of humanity so tenderly suffering that we need the highest kind of means of salvation and consolation: whence arises the danger that man may bleed to death through the truth that he realises.

Madness is not a consequence of uncertainty but of certainty.

Even the most honest writer lets slip a word too many when he wants to round off a period.

Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.

A thing can only live through a pious illusion.

The surest aid in combating the male's disease of self-contempt is to be loved by a clever woman.

Different types of dangerous lives-You have no idea what you are living through; you rush through life as if you were drunk and now and then fall down some staircase. But thanks to your drunkenness you never break a limb; your muscles are too relaxed and your brain too benighted for you to find the stones of these stairs as hard as we do.