If God had wanted to become an object of love, he would first of all have had to forgo judging and justice : a judge, and even a gracious judge, is no object of love.

Three metamorphoses of the spirit I relate to you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child.

Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.

The less men are fettered by tradition, the greater becomes the inward activity of their motives, and greater again in proportion to their outer restlessness.

Whoever thinks much and to good purpose easily forgets his own experiences, but not the thoughts which these experiences have called forth.

With regard to philosophical metaphysics, I always see increasing numbers who have attained to the negative goal, but as yet few who climb a few rungs backwards; one ought to look out, perhaps, over the last steps of the ladder, but not try to stand upon them.

The charm of the Platonic mode of thought ... consisted precisely in the resistance to the obvious evidence of the senses.