I want to know whether you are a person devoted to creating or to exchanging in some respect or other: as a creator you belong tothe free, as an exchanger you are their slave and instrument.

One should part from life as Odysseus parted from Nausicaa-blessing it rather than in love with it.

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.

There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.

Tragedy is dead! Poetry itself died with it! Away, away with you, puny, stunted imitators! Away with you to Hades, and eat your fill of the old masters' crumbs!

If we lacked curiosity, we should do less for the good of our neighbor. But, under the name of duty or pity, curiosity steals into the home of the unhappy and the needy. Perhaps even in the famous mother-love there is a good deal of curiosity.

Compassion for the friend should conceal itself under a hard shell.