Some people appear to be more meager in talent than they are, just because the tasks they set themselves are always too great.

I fly in dreams, I know it is my privilege, I do not recall a single situation in dreams when I was unable to fly. To execute every sort of curve and angle with a light impulse, a flying mathematics - that is so distinct a happiness that it has permanently suffused my basic sense of happiness.

What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored.

Lust and self-mutilation are closely related impulses. There are also self-mutilators among knowers: they do not want to be creators under any circumstances.

He who seeks intelligence lacks intelligence.

In our interactions with people, a benevolent hypocrisy is frequently required--acting as though we do not see through the motivesof their actions.

The aphorism, the apothegm, in which I am the first among the Germans to be a master, are the forms of “eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does not say in a book.