Success has always been a great liar.

I change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday. When I ascend I often jump over steps, and no step forgives me that.

In all institutions from which the cold wind of open criticism is excluded, an innocent corruption begins to grow like a mushroom - for example, in senates and learned societies

The surest sign that two people no longer speak the same language is that both say ironic things to one another but that neither senses the irony.

We are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves.

That the world is not the embodiment of an eternal rationality can be conclusively proved by the fact that the piece of the worldthat we know--I mean our human reason--is not so very rational. And if it is not eternally and completely wise and rational, then the rest of the world will not be either; here the conclusion a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum applies, and does so with decisive force.

It is absolutely impossible for a subject to see or have insight into something while leaving itself out of the picture, so impossible that knowing and being are the most opposite of all spheres.