Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject.

Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.

It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely, without putting his whole self into it, quite unawares, presenting as if in allegory the basic themes and problems of his life.

Reduced to a miserable mass level, the level of a Hitler, German Romanticism broke out into hysterical barbarism.

There is only one real misfortune: to forfeit one's own good opinion of oneself. Lose your complacency, once betray your own self-contempt and the world will unhesitatingly endorse it.

No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.