Moderation sees itself as beautiful; it is unaware that in the eye of the immoderate it appears black and sober and consequently ugly-looking.

Not infrequently, we encounter copies of important human beings; and here, too, as in the case of paintings, most people prefer the copies to the originals.

It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learns how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!

Not the intensity but the duration of high feelings makes high men.

Only as an aesthetic product can the world be justified to all eternity.

One unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other.

Writers ought to be regarded as wrongdoers who deserve to be acquitted or pardoned only in the rarest cases: that would be a way to keep books from getting out of hand.