The greatest happiness for the thinking person is to have explored the explorable and to venerate in equanimity that which cannotbe explored.

If you want to get pleasure out of life, you must attach value to the world.

Do not hurry; do not rest.

All ages have said and repeated that one should strive to know one's self. This is a strange demand which no one up to now has measured up to and, strictly considered, no one should. With all their study and effort, people are directed to what is outside, to the world about them, and they are kept busy coming to know this and to master it to the extent that their purposes require. . . . How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.

The world is full of contradiction.

Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect, that every one should study, by all methods, to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things. ...For this reason, one ought every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

National literature does not mean much these days; now is the age of world literature, and every one must contribute to hasten thearrival of that age.