Scholars who become politicians are usually assigned the comic role of having to be the good conscience of state policy.

Whoever knows he is deep tries to be clear, but whoever wants to seem deep to the crowd tries to be obscure. For the crowd supposes that anything it cannot see to the bottom must be deep: it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.

One must learn to love oneself with a wholesome and healthy love, so that one can bear to be with oneself and need not roam.

Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.

He who has always spared himself much will in the end become sickly of so much consideration. Praised be what hardens!

Mothers easily become jealous of their sons' friends when they are particularly successful. As a rule a mother loves herself in her son more than she does the son himself.

We must understand how to hide in darkness in order to escape the gnat-swarms of utterly annoying admirers.