We are praised or blamed, as the one or the other may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power of discernment.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

In all institutions from which the cold wind of open criticism is excluded, an innocent corruption begins to grow like a mushroom - for example, in senates and learned societies

Aphorisms should be peaks - and those who are addressed, tall and lofty. The air thin and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of gay sarcasm: these go well together.

Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!

You are rewarding a teacher poorly if you remain always a pupil.

Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.