Someone said: "I have been prejudiced against myself from my earliest childhood: hence I find some truth in all blame and some stupidity in all praise. I generally estimate praise too poorly and blame too highly.

Logic, too, also rests on assumptions that do not correspond to anything in the real world, e.g., on the assumption that there areequal things, that the same thing is identical at different points in time: but this science arose as a result of the opposite belief (that such things actually exist in the real world). And it is the same with mathematics, which would certainly never have arisen if it had been understood from the beginning that there is no such thing in nature as a perfectly straight line, a true circle, and absolute measure.

Whoever, at any time, has undertaken to build a new heaven has found the strength for it in his own hell.

I feel all those human beings to be pernicious who can no longer oppose what they love: they thereby ruin the best things and people.

You want to be paid as well, you virtuous! You want reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your today?

The object of convalescence ought to be to turn our attention to life: at other times, simply to our tasks!

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?