People can only live with their equals, and not even with them; for in the long run they cannot tolerate that someone is their equal.

It is related of an Englishman that he hanged himself to avoid the daily task of dressing and undressing.

Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind. I grasped a lovely masked procession, And caught things from a horror show… I’d gladly settle for a false impression, If it would last a little longer, though.

When we see the many grave-stones which have fallen in, which have been defaced by the footsteps of the congregation, which lie buried under the ruins of the churches, that have themselves crumbled together over them; we may fancy the life after death to be as a second life, into which man enters in the figure, or the picture or the inscription, and lives longer there than when he was really alive. But this figure also, this second existence, dies out too, sooner or later. Time will not allow himself to be cheated of his rights with the monuments of men or with themselves.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.

When one is polite in German, one lies.