Like tourists huffing and puffing to reach the peak we forget the view on the way up.

Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance.

The greatest events-they are not our loudest but our stillest hours.

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.

One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and pretty ones to fear.

It is not in our hands to prevent our birth; but we can correct this mistake - for in some cases it is a mistake.

Every habit makes our hand more witty and our wit less handy.