It quite often happens that the old man is subject to the delusion of a great moral renewal and rebirth, and from this experience he passes judgments on the work and course of his life, as if he had only now become clear-sighted; and yet the inspiration behind this feeling of well-being and these confident judgements is not wisdom, but weariness .

Whoever does not know how to find the way to his ideal lives more frivolously and impudently than the man without an ideal.

Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!

We are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves.

In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself, among crowds by the many.

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, and the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough - I call it the one immortal blemish on the human race.

Faith is the path of least resistance.