One must be something to be able to do something.

Let no one be like another, yet everyone like the highest. How is this done? Be each one perfect in himself.

It would be a lowly art that allowed itself to be understood all at once.

How can one learn to know oneself? Never by introspection, rather by action.

He who would reproach an author for obscurity should look into his own mind to see whether it is quite clear there. In the dusk the plainest writing is illegible.

The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy.

Several classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.