This is the fundamental idea of culture, insofar as it sets but one task for each of us: to further the production of the philosopher, of the artist, and of the saint within us and outside us, and thereby to work at the consummation of nature.

What we call truths are just those errors that we cannot give up.

There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.

The aphorism, the apothegm, in which I am the first among the Germans to be a master, are the forms of “eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does not say in a book.

Nobody is more inferior than those who insist on being equal.

We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are.

A woman's pity, which is talkative, carries the sick person's bed to the public marketplace.