Nothing can be done about it: every master has but a single pupil--and he will not stay loyal to him--for he is also destined to become a master.

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

One pays dearly for being immortal: one must die many times during his life.

The woman and the genius do not work. Up to now, woman has been mankind's supreme luxury. In all those moments when we do our best, we do not work. Work is merely a means to these moments.

What I understand by "philosopher": a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger.

This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!

He who seeks intelligence lacks intelligence.