Through searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backwards, and finally he also believes backwards.

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 nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right --especially when one is right.

Three metamorphoses of the spirit I relate to you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child.

We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.

Epicurus had rage and envy of Plato's superior style.

Forgetting: that is a divine capacity. And whoever aspires to the heights and wants to fly must cast off much that is heavy and make himself light--I call it a divine capacity for lightness.