It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them.

A tragedy means always a mans struggle with that which is stronger than man.

There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.

All real democracy is an attempt like that of a jolly hostess to bring the shy people out.

Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.

The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when Joy is the fundamental thing in him, and Grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive state of mind; Praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; Joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live? Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.