Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.

The ability to suffer is a small matter - weak women and even slaves can acheive virtuosity in that.

Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed to be true.

When we stand the truth on its head we generally fail to notice that our head is not standing where it should be standing either.

One should part from life as Odysseus parted from Nausicaa-blessing it rather than in love with it.

Man is more sensitive to the contempt of others than to self-contempt.

Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)