A little in one's own pocket is better than much in another man's purse. Don Quixote

I looked at that hand and felt how rough and deeply hostile it was to me, how it was reaching out for my life and my peace of mind Demian

As it is pleasant to see the sea from the land, so it is pleasant for him who has escaped from troubles to think of them. Fragment

More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary furtherers of men whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have rarely felt like friends of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but eventually also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscience of their time. Beyond Good and Evil