The lack of closeness among friends is a fault that cannot be reprimanded without becoming incurable.

That is an artist as I would have an artist be, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art--panemet Circen.

Inaction, letting be, neither creating nor destroying--that is my evil. And also the knower as one without desire.

How can anyone become a thinker unless he spends at least a third of every day away from passions, people, and books?

Whoever knows he is deep tries to be clear, but whoever wants to seem deep to the crowd tries to be obscure. For the crowd supposes that anything it cannot see to the bottom must be deep: it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.

The belief in authority is the source of conscience; which is therefore not the voice of God in the heart of man, but the voice of some men in man.

The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the doer.