The thought that really crushes us is the thought of the futility of life of which death is the visible manifestation.

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

A dictionary can embrace only a small part of the vast tapestry of a language.

It's not our disadvantages or shortcomings that are ridiculous, but rather the studious way we try to hide them, and our desire to act as if they did not exist.

There are some centuries which - apart from everything else - in the art and other disciplines presume to remake everything because they know how to make nothing.

Every man remembers his childhood as a kind of mythical age, just as every nation's childhood is its mythical age.

Nature, with her customary beneficence, has ordained that man shall not learn how to live until the reasons for living are stolen from him, that he shall find no enjoyment until he has become incapable of vivid pleasure.