The real world is much smaller than the imaginary

Death. The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity- and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.

I despise mystics, they fancy themselves so deep, when they aren't even superficial.

The most unequivocal sign of contempt for man is to regard everybody merely as a means to one's own ends, or of no account whatever.

As a human being Plato mingles regal, exclusive, and self-contained features with melancholy compassion.

Examine the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly skywards can dispense with bad weather and storms. Whether misfortune and opposition, or every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favourable conditions without which a great growth even of virtue is hardly possible?

How much disgruntled heaviness, lameness, dampness, how much beer is there in the German intelligence.