The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.
No one is so terribly deceived as he who does not himself suspect it.
The more men believe an idea to be true the greater the likelihood that the idea is mistaken. Those who are right usually stand alone.
In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.
You live life looking forward, you understand life looking backward.
The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.