One must be a great man indeed to be able to hold out even against common sense." "Or else a fool.

There is, indeed, nothing more annoying than to be, for instance, wealthy, of good family, nice-looking, fairly intelligent, and even good-natured, and yet to have no talents, no special faculty, no peculiarity even, not one idea of one's own, to be precisely "like other people.

One circumstance tormented me then: Namely, that no one else was like me, and I was like no one else. I am only one, and they are all.

Civilization merely develops man's capacity for a greater variety of sensations, and ... absolutely nothing else.

He who masters the grey everyday is a hero.

Reason and Knowledge have always played a secondary, subordinate, auxiliary role in the life of peoples, and this will always be the case. A people is shaped and driven forward by an entirely different kind of force, one which commands and coerces them and the origin of which is obscure and inexplicable despite the reality of its presence.

Every man looks out for himself, and he has the happiest life who manages to hoodwink himself best of all.