A pipe is a pocket philosopher,--a truer one than Socrates, for it never asks questions. Socrates must have been very tiresome, when one thinks of it.

for what is the gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which others cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear?

It is hard work to be good when you are very little and very hungry, and have many sticks to beat you, and no mother's lips to kiss you.

The loss of our illusions is the only loss from which we never recover.

Humiliation is a guest that only comes to those who have made ready his resting-place, and will give him a fair welcome. ... no one can disgrace you save yourself.

the State only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two walls.

Genius cannot escape the taint of its time more than a child the influence of its begetting.