All Quotes

"He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards."

"As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown."

"Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me me."

"We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves. Even if my philosophy does not extend to discovering anything new, it does nevertheless possess the courage to regard as questionable what has long been thought true."

"What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed..."

"Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner."

"Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is."

"Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit."

"Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age."

"Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the honest man that he was — nobody any longer wanted to be that."

"The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing."

"If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger."

"Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm."

"Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads."

"The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak."

"Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer."

"That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim."

"What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?"

"When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?"

"There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself."

"Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of."

"To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite."

"We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy — at least until we have become as clever as they are."

"Body and soul: a horse harnessed beside an ox."

"If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies."

"Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever."

"A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments."

"Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want?"

"Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure."

"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."

"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."

"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."