It is far more important that one's life should be perceived than that it should be transformed; for no sooner has it been perceived, than it transforms itself of its own accord.

At every crossroad on the way that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past.

(there is) no other means of escaping from one's consciousness than to deny it, to look upon it as an organic disease of the terrestrial intelligence - a disease which we must endeavor to cure by an action which must appear to us an action of violent and willful madness, but which, on the other side of our appearances, is probably an action of health. ("Of Immortality")

In any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods.

To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.

I have never for one instant seen clearly within myself. How then would you have me judge the deeds of others?

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.