“The most fatal seductive lie that has yet existed”
“When we cannot stand certain people, we try to have suspicions about them.”
“I listened for the echo, and I heard only praise —”
“The moment Germany rises as a great power, France gains a new importance as a cultural power.”
“What is it that you love in others?--My hopes.”
“Only he who is man enough will release the woman in woman.”
“Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.”
“Every living body continuously eliminates feces, it rejects what is not serviceable to the assimilating organism: what man despises, what arouses his disgust, what he calls evil, are excrements.”
“Books for general reading always smell bad; the odor of common people hangs around them.”
“For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so effective as the assertion that in their case no consolation is possible: it implies so great a degree of distinction that they at once hold up their heads again.”
“The patient. The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait: and both without impatience: - they give no thought to the little people beneath them devoured by their impatience and their curiosity.”
“The state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies-and whatever it has, it has stolen.”
“I am really very, very tired of everything - more than tired.”
“Robinson had a servant even better than Friday: His name was Crusoe.”
“There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.”
“The rights which a man arrogates to himself are relative to the duties which he sets himself, and to the tasks which he feels capable of performing.”
“That which intoxicates, the sensually ecstatic, the sudden surprise, the urge to be profoundly stirred at any price -- dreadful tendencies!”
“Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.”
“Man is more sensitive to the contempt that others feel towards him than to the contempt that he feels towards himself.”
“In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.”
“After all, what would be "beautiful" if the contradiction had not first become conscious of itself, if the ugly had not first said to itself: "I am ugly"?.”
“After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.”
“Existence begins in every instant.”
“Do not be deceived! The busiest people harbor the greatest weariness, their restlessness is weakness--they no longer have the capacity for waiting and idleness.”
“Among the wealthy, generosity is often merely a kind of shyness.”
