The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude.

With deep men, as with deep wells, it takes a long time for anything that falls into them to hit bottom. Onlookers, who almost never wait long enough, readily suppose that such men are callous and unresponsive--or even boring.

Physician, help yourself: thus help your patient too. Let this be his best help: that he may behold with his eyes the man who heals himself.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

What is the difference between someone who is convinced and one who is deceived? None, if he is well deceived.

Each word of Heraclitus expresses the pride and the majesty of truth, but of truth grasped in intuitions rather than attained by the rope ladder of logic.

The great end of art is to strike the imagination with the power of a soul that refuses to admit defeat even in the midst of a collapsing world.