However much we may feel for the misery of someone close to us, we always act with some artificiality in their presence. We hold-back from telling them everything we think, often because we do not genuinely mean what we say; or because we take a pleasure in their plight, thankful that we are not affected.

All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle

The noble type of man feels himself to be the determiner of values, he does not need to be approved of, he judges 'what harms me is harmful in itself', he knows himself to be that which in general accords honour to things, he creates values.

The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it.

One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.