He is noble who both feels and acts nobly.

All our contemporary philosophers perhaps without knowing it are looking through eyeglasses that Baruch Spinoza polished. Spinoza was a philosopher who earned his livelihood by grinding lenses.

Thought precedes action as lighting does thunder.

I consider it a degradation and a stain on my honor to submit to baptism in order to qualify myself for state employment in Prussia.

Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but less by assimilation than by friction.

A blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman.

We know only that our entire existence is forced into new paths and disrupted, that new circumstances, new joys and new sorrows await us, and that the unknown has its uncanny attractions, alluring and at the same time anguishing.