Strong currents drag many stones and bushes along with them, strong intellects many dense and muddled minds.

Aphorisms should be peaks - and those who are addressed, tall and lofty. The air thin and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of gay sarcasm: these go well together.

All truths are bloody truths to me.

Moral contempt is a far greater indignity and insult than any kind of crime.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Original minds are not distinguished by being the first to see a new thing, but instead by seeing the old, familiar thing that is over-looked as something new.

To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [....] Without cruelty there is no festival.