The most general deficiency in our sort of culture and education is gradually dawning on me: no one learns, no one strives towards, no one teaches--enduring loneliness.

Learn to see - accustoming the eye to calm, to patience, to letting-things-come-to-it; learning to defer judgment, to encircle and encompass the question on all sides.

The apprentice and the master love the master in different ways.

The moment Germany rises as a great power, France gains a new importance as a cultural power.

When an idea is just rising on the horizon, the soul's temperature with respect to it is usually very cold. Only gradually does the idea develop its warmth, and it is hottest (which is to say, exerting its greatest influence) when belief in the idea is already once again in decline.

People who, out of an inborn moderation, leave every glass standing only half-emptied refuse to admit that everything in the world has its sediments and dregs.

The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising.