Vanity is the fear of appearing original: it is thus a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of originality.

Fathers and sons are much more considerate of one another than mothers and daughters.

A philosophical mythology lies concealed in language, which breaks out again at every moment, no matter how cautious we may be.

The disgust with dirt can be so great that it keeps us from cleaning ourselves--from "justifying" ourselves.

When we dream about those who are long since forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have undergone a radical transformation and that the ground on which we live has been completely dug up: then the dead rise up, and our antiquity becomes modernity.

Logic, too, also rests on assumptions that do not correspond to anything in the real world, e.g., on the assumption that there areequal things, that the same thing is identical at different points in time: but this science arose as a result of the opposite belief (that such things actually exist in the real world). And it is the same with mathematics, which would certainly never have arisen if it had been understood from the beginning that there is no such thing in nature as a perfectly straight line, a true circle, and absolute measure.

Having a talent is not enough: one must also have your permission to have it--right, my friends?