Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.

Those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions.

However closely people are attached to one another, their mutual horizon nonetheless includes all four compass directions, and nowand again they notice it.

He who is dissatisfied with himself is continually ready for revenge and we others will be his victims, if only in having always to endure his ugly sight. For the sight of the ugly makes one bad and gloomy.

We have to learn how to come out of unclean situations cleaner than we were, and even how to wash ourselves with dirty water whenwe need to.

If an architect wants to strengthen a decrepit arch, he increases the load laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together.

How much rationality and higher protection there is in such self-deception, and how much falseness I still require in order to allow myself again and again the luxury of my sincerity.