Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself.

One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and pretty ones to fear.

It takes physical courage to indulge in wickedness. The "good" are too cowardly to do it.

...one can speak with the utmost clearness, and yet not be heard by anyone.

“Evil men have no songs.” How is it, then, that the Russians have songs?

As soon as we climb higher than those who had at one time admired us, we appear to them as though we have sunken and fallen down:for, in any event, they had at one time supposed that they were with us (even if it were through us) on the heights.

Every habit makes our hand more witty and our wit less handy.