If content with himself and mankind, a man is never harsh or curt.

The world laughs at things it would really prefer to admire, and like Aesop's fox it criticizes things it covets.

We remember childhood as the fabulous years of our lives, and nations remember their childhood as fabulous years.

He who travels much has this advantage over others – that the things he remembers soon become remote, so that in a short time they acquire the vague and poetical quality which is only given to other things by time. He who has not traveled at all has this disadvantage – that all his memories are of things present somewhere, since the places with which all his memories are concerned are present.

The commonplace expression that life is nothing but a play is verified above all in this: the world speaks absolutely consistently in one way and acts absolutely consistently in another.

The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one s own knowledge is not to overstep them.

Men do not so much hate an evil-doer, or evil itself, as they hate the man who calls evil by its real name.