The value of many men and books rests solely on their faculty for compelling all to seek out the most hidden and intimate things.

The view that honesty is something, and even a virtue, belongs, it is true, to those private opinions which are forbidden in this age of public opinions.

Existence begins in every instant.

It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it.

Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.

Systems of morals are only a sign-language of the emotions.

That is the most extreme form of nihilism: nothingness (the "meaningless") eternally!