A married philosopher is a comic character.

We talk about taking "pleasure in a thing": but in truth it is pleasure in ourselves, mediated by a thing.

It was modesty that invented the word "philosopher" in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneselfwise to the actors of the spirit--the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato.

Truth will have no gods before it.- The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.

How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare? ... that became for me more and more the real measure of value.

It is very noble hypocrisy not to talk of one's self.

The good four. Honest with ourselves and with whatever is friend to us; courageous toward the enemy; generous toward the vanquished; polite-always that is how the four cardinal virtues want us.