[Heraclitus' language] dispenses with lightness and artificial decoration, foremost out of disgust for humanity and out of [his own] defiant feeling.

One should not go into churches if one wants to breathe pure air.

These four, however, seek the freedom of their will at the very point where they are most securely chained. It is as if the silkworm sought freedom of will in spinning. What is the reason?

Everyone thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.

In a seriously intended intellectual emancipation a person's mute passions and cravings also hope to find their advantage.

He who rejoices even at the stake triumphs not over pain but over the absence of pain where he had anticipated feeling it. A parable.

Sometimes in our relationship to another human being the proper balance of friendship is restored when we put a few grains of impropriety onto our own side of the scale.