Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.

We have become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth in what we tell children and not to withhold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level.

From error to error one discovers the entire truth.

Religious doctrines … are all illusions, they do not admit of proof, and no one can be compelled to consider them as true or to believe in them.

The pleasure of satisfying a savage instinct, undomesticated by the ego, is uncomparably much more intense than the one of satisfying a tamed instinct. The reason is becoming the enemy that prevents us from a lot of possibilities of pleasure.

Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.

As regards intellectual work it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual, working in solitude.