“All truths are bloody truths to me.”

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”

“When somebody dies we usually need reasons for consolation, not so much to alleviate our pain as to excuse ourselves for so readily feeling consoled.”

“But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!”

“In a seriously intended intellectual emancipation a person's mute passions and cravings also hope to find their advantage.”

“[Gratitude is] the cheerfulness of wisdom.”

“One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet,--for beauty is his aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace; he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe.”

“Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness, - an open and noble temper.”