A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch.

There is always some madness in love.

I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.

Women are considered deep - why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.

O sancta simplicitas! What strange simplification and falsification mankind lives on! One can never cease to marvel once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us bright and free and easy and simple! How we have known how to bestow on our senses a passport to everything superficial, on our thoughts a divine desire for wanton gambling and false conclusions! - how we have from the very beginning understood how to retain our ignorance so as to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, frivolity, impetuosity, bravery, cheerfulness of life, so as to enjoy life!

Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.

If a man wishes to become a hero, then the serpent must first become a dragon: otherwise he lacks his proper enemy.