Quotes

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

A little health now and again is the ailing person’s best remedy.

The secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously!

Possessions are generally diminished by possession.

Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.

Keeping up appearances, living in borrowed finery, wearing masks, the drapery of convention, play-acting for the benefit of others and oneself ... the constant fluttering of human beings around the one flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that there is virtually nothing which defies understanding so much as the fact that an honest and pure drive towards truth should ever have emerged in them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream-images; their eyes merely glide across the surface of things and see 'forms'; nowhere does their perception lead to truth.

To stand in the midst of ... this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity in existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning ... that is what I feel to be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human has this feeling just because he is human.

Looking for work in order to be paid: in civilized countries today almost all men are at one in doing that. For all of them work is a means and not an end in itself. Hence they are not very refined in their choice of work, if only it pays well. But there are, if only rarely, men who would rather perish than work without any pleasure in their work. They are choosy, hard to satisfy, and do not care for ample rewards, if the work itself is not to be the reward of rewards. Artists and contemplative men of all kinds belong to this rare breed, but so do even those men of leisure who spend their lives hunting, traveling, or in love affairs and adventures. All of these desire work and misery only if it is associated with pleasure, and the hardest, most difficult work if necessary. Otherwise their idleness is resolute, even if it spells impoverishment, dishonor, and danger to life and limb. They do not fear boredom as much as work without pleasure.

For nothing is more democratic than logic; it is no respecter of persons and makes no distinction between crooked and straight noses.

Great intellects are skeptical.

Against boredom even the gods struggle in vain.

Woman was God's second mistake.

Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself -- in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity -- is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.

A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.

The first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about a matter is usually not our own, but only the customary one, appropriate to our caste, position, or parentage; our own opinions seldom swim near the surface.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

A few hours' mountain climbing make of a rogue and a saint two fairly equal creatures.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.