A book full of brilliance imparts some of it even to its opponents.

A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.

What makes one heroic? - Going out to meet at the same time one's highest suffering and one's highest hope.

There is one thing one has to have either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge.

To our strongest impulse, to the tyrant in us, not only our reason but also our conscience yields.

Because we have for millenia made moral, aesthetic, religious demands on the world, looked upon it with blind desire, passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits of illogical thinking, this world has gradually become so marvelously variegated, frightful, meaningful, soulful, it has acquired color - but we have been the colorists: it is the human intellect that has made appearances appear and transported its erroneous basic conceptions into things.

I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said--and did not say.