In our interactions with people, a benevolent hypocrisy is frequently required--acting as though we do not see through the motivesof their actions.

We must take precautions against being prematurely honed sharp--since at the same time we are being prematurely honed thin.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

Whoever regards human beings as a herd and flees them as swiftly as he can will no doubt be overtaken by them and impaled on theirhorns.

When we dream about those who are long since forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have undergone a radical transformation and that the ground on which we live has been completely dug up: then the dead rise up, and our antiquity becomes modernity.

The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.

It is no doubt possible to fly--but first you must know how to dance like an angel.