One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed.

We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are.

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.

We evaluate the services that anyone renders to us according to the value he puts on them, not according to the value they have for us.

no one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any

As much as possible, and this as quickly as possible: that is what the great mental and emotional illness craves that is variously called "present" or "culture," but that is actually a symptom of consumption.

When I was twelve years old I thought up an odd trinity: namely, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Devil. My inference wasthat God, in contemplating himself, created the second person of the godhead; but that, in order to be able to contemplate himself, he had to contemplate, and thus to create, his opposite.--With this I began to do philosophy.