"A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already."

"As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word."

"The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special."

"There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. … It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth … into a liar — that I call an achievement."

"Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes."

"Good taste is either that which agrees with my taste or that which subjects itself to the rule of reason. From this we can see how useful it is to employ reason in seeking out the laws of taste."

"With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed."

"We do not think good metaphors are anything very important, but I think that a good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on..."

"What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty."

"A on his lips and not-A in his heart."

"If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read."

"The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect."

"If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It."

"If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards."

"The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism."

"We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him."

"Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself."

"Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous."

"I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too."

"A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense."

"Ideas too are a life and a world."

"I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up."

"Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial."

"There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them."

"If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever.... Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later."

"There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven."

"Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity."

"Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams."

"Sickness is mankind's greatest defect."

"The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders."

"What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?"

"Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism."

"Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself."

"It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial."

"When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so."

"You believe that I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange."

"People nowadays have such high hopes of America and the political conditions obtaining there that one might say the desires, at least the secret desires, of all enlightened Europeans are deflected to the west, like our magnetic needles."

"It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody’s beard."

"What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others."

"He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection."

"There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking."

"To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so."

"Popular presentation today is all too often that which puts the mob in a position to talk about something without understanding it."

"The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery."

"The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things."

"The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it."

"We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest."

"The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted."

"He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals."