One lives for the day, one lives very fast, one lives very irresponsibly: precisely this is called "freedom."

To the mediocre, mediocrity is a form of happiness.

One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

Whoever wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue: then others can imitate and yet at the same time surpass the one they imitate-which human beings love to do.

Whoever reaches his ideal transcends it eo ipso.

In order for once to get a glimpse of our European morality from a distance, in order to compare it with other earlier or future moralities, one must do as the traveller who wants to know the height of the towers of a city: he leaves the city.

Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today