In a man devoted to knowledge, pity seems almost ridiculous, like delicate hands on a cyclops.

We have art so that we shall not die of reality.

He who does not desire much more from things than knowledge of them easily makes peace with his soul.

It is inhuman to bless where one is cursed.

But thought is one thing, the deed is another, and the image of the deed still another: the wheel of causality does not roll between them.

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 desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.