It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.

I would give something to know for whose sake precisely those deeds were really done which report says were done for the fatherland.

A man of spirit must not think of the word difficulty as so much as existing. Away with it!

Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.