To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.

People who have read a good deal rarely make great discoveries. I do not say this in excuse of laziness, but because invention presupposes an extensive independent contemplation of things.

To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves.

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.