Men are even lazier than they are timorous, and what they fear most is the troubles with which any unconditional honesty and nudity would burden them.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

Everything that is ponderous, vicious and pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying kinds of style, are developed in great variety among Germans.

I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.

The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that building can be destroyed and nonetheless possess value as material.

The poison by which the weaker nature is destroyed is strengthening to the strong individual and he does not call it poison.

In every party there is one person who, through his dotingly credulous enunciation of party principles, incites the other members to defection.