People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

What is new, however, is always evil, being that which wants to conquer and overthrow the old boundary markers and the old pieties; and only what is old is good. The good men are in all ages those who dig the old thoughts, digging deep and getting them to bear fruit - the farmers of the spirit. But eventually all land is depleted, and the ploughshare of evil must come again and again.

The person lives most beautifully who does not reflect upon existence

Laughter means: taking a mischievous delight in someone else's uneasiness, but with a good conscience.

Every power draws its ultimate consequences at every moment.

The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.

The good displeases us when we are not up to it.