I have never seen an ass who talked like a human being, but I have met many human beings who talked like asses.

God has given us speech in order that we may say pleasant things to our friends, and tell bitter truths to our enemies.

The real madness probably is not another thing that the wisdom itself that, tired of discovering the shames of the world, has taken the intelligent resolution to become mad

The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.

Whenever books are burned, men also in the end are burned.

Reason exercises merely the function of preserving order, is, so to say, the police in the region of art. In life it is mostly a cold arithmetician summing up our follies.

First, I thought, almost despairing, This must crush my spirit now; Yet I bore it, and am bearing- Only do not ask me how.