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.

That is why all great men are modest: they consistently measure themselves not in comparison to other people but to the idea of perfection ever present in their minds, an ideal infinitely clearer and greater than any common people have, and they also realize how far they are from fulfilling their ideal.

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

If the best company is that which we leave feeling most satisfied with ourselves, it follows that it is the company we leave most bored.

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

No human trait deserves less tolerance in everyday life, and gets less, than intolerance.