The unlucky hand dealt to clear and precise writers is that people assume they are superficial and so do not go to any trouble inreading them: and the lucky hand dealt to unclear ones is that the reader does go to some trouble and then attributes the pleasure he experiences in his own zeal to them.

Death is close enough at hand so we do not need to be afraid of life.

The inclination to self-depreciation, to freely accepting being robbed, being duped, and being swindled, could be the modesty of a god among men.

Man's maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.

Sometimes all you need to do to win clever people over to a principle is to present it in the form of a shocking paradox.

The golden age, when rambunctious spirits were regarded as the source of evil.

Whoever aims publicly at great things and at length perceives secretly that he is too weak to achieve them, has usually also insufficient strength to renounce his aims publicly, and then inevitably becomes a hypocrite.