- It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.
- Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
- Life is a business that does not cover the costs.
- Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
- We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
- Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.
- The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
- ...this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways is-nothing.
- Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
- Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
- Compassion is the basis of morality.
- The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
- A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.
- Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.
- Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
- One should use common words to say uncommon things
- They tell us that Suicide is the greatest piece of Cowardice... That Suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in this world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
- The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.
- Life is a constant process of dying.
- It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.
- What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness hover before us in our dreams, and we search in vain for their original. Much would have been gained if, through timely advice and instruction, young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them.
- A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.
- We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor.
- If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?
- Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude
- It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer
- So the problem is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought concerning that which everybody sees.
- Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.
- Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.
- Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.
- We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.
- Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.
- No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.
- I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.
- Marrying means to halve one's rights and double one's duties
- Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
- Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.
- The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.
- Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
- Every problem goes through three stages before it is recognized: In the first, it is ridiculed. In the second it is fought against, in the third it is taken for granted.
- People's envy indicates how unhappy they themselves feel; their constant attention to other people's doings and omissions, how they get bored.
- Ever since I got to know people, I've loved animals.
- Everyone can only be completely themselves as long as they are alone. So whoever doesn't love solitude doesn't love freedom either; Because you are only free when you are alone!
- In the event of my death, I make a confession here that I despise the German nation because of its excessive stupidity and that I am ashamed to belong to it.
- The only man who really can't live without women is the gynecologist.
- Pity for animals is so closely related to the goodness of character that one can confidently say that anyone who is cruel to animals cannot be a good person.
- The greatest of all follies is to sacrifice your health for whatever it may be.
- And as for the women, I was very fond of them - if only they had wanted me.
- In old age one understands better how to prevent misfortunes, and in youth how to endure them.
- Everyone is the secret theater director of his dreams... Everyone is a Shakespeare while he dreams.
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