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

Men use a new lesson or experience later on as a ploughshare or perhaps also as a weapon; women at once make it into an ornament.

A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.

The person lives most beautifully who does not reflect upon existence

Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.

Out of damp and gloomy days, out of solitude, out of loveless words directed at us, conclusions grow up in us like fungus: one morning they are there, we know not how, and they gaze upon us, morose and gray. Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him.

The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.