Success has always been the greatest liar - and the "work" itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer is disguised by his creations, often beyond recognition; the "work," whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have create it; "great men," as they are venerated, are subsequent pieces of wretched minor fiction

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

What does it matter whether I am shown to be right! I am right too much!--And he who laughs best today will also laugh last.

Whoever commits to paper what he suffers becomes a melancholy author: but he becomes a serious author when he tells us what he suffered and why he now reposes in joy.

Time, space, and causality are only metaphors of knowledge, with which we explain things to ourselves.

The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type.

Writers ought to be regarded as wrongdoers who deserve to be acquitted or pardoned only in the rarest cases: that would be a way to keep books from getting out of hand.